To fill the spaces, use a word formed with the words in the list below.
SQUASHED DOG STORIES
Newspapers have a (01)................... for what the French call "squashed dog" stories. In England, they are "goldfish emerging from bathroom tap" stories. Such stories run under the "Man Bites Dog" (02)................... . From France comes the story of an (03)................... savage attack on an old man near Calais carried out by a swarm of bees. The scenario might have pleased Hitchcock. The victim was (04)................... himself in his garden at the time. The firemen were called but were driven back into their van by the (05)................... of the insects. After 45 minutes someone arrived with (06)................... clothing and (07)................... . By then the man sitting in the deck chair was dead, covered in hundreds of stings, most of them on his eyelids.
The French liked the story from London about grafting a pig's kidneys on to a human patient. They went for the animal rights angle. They like the idea of putting a (08)................... ring round the hospital to repel people who are intent on rescuing the pig from (09)................... . From London, too, came the story of the brown paper parcel in London's main parcel sorting office, a parcel which moved. Packages do not normally move very quickly through the post office at the best of times, but this one was definitely frisky. A lady customs officer was summoned to X-ray the package. The X-ray revealed a (10)................... reptile called a gila monster wrapped in a sock. The subsequent police trail led to a salesman in Hampshire whose back bedroom was filled with rattlesnakes, lethal lizards, snapping turtles and a python, most of which he had sent himself through the post.
01. fond
02. head
03. except
04. sun
05. fierce
06. protect
07. insect
08. secure
09. member
10. poison
