365个英语简短小故事-203. A Life-Saving Cow

（单词翻译）

Six consecutive¹ days of spring rain had created a raging river running by Nancy Brown’s farm. As she tried to herd² her cows to higher ground, she slipped and hit her head on a fallen tree trunk. The fall knocked her out for a moment or two. When she came to, Lizzie, one of her oldest and favorite cows, was licking³ her face. The water was rising. Nancy got up and began walking slowly with Lizzie. The water was now waist high. Nancy’s pace got slower and slower. Finally, all she could do was to throw her arm around Lizzie’s neck and try to hang on. About 20 minutes later, Lizzie managed to successfully pull herself and Nancy out of the raging water and onto a bit of high land, a small island now in the middle of acres of white water.

Even though it was about noon, the sky was so dark and the rain and lightning so bad that it took rescuers another two hours to discover Nancy. A helicopter lowered a paramedic, who attached Nancy to a life-support hoist⁴. They raised her into the helicopter and took her to the school gym, where the Red Cross had set up an emergency shelter.

When the flood subsided⁵ two days later, Nancy immediately went back to the “island.” Lizzie was gone. She was one of 19 cows that Nancy lost. “I owe my life to her,” said Nancy sobbingly⁶.