http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/16/world/europe/boom-over-st-patricks-isle-is-slithering-again.

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BALLIVOR, Ireland Legend has it that St. Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland. The
economic crisis has _____ some of them back.

During the Celtic Tiger boom, snakes became a popular pet among the Irish nouveaux riches,
status symbols in a country famous for its _____ of indigenous serpents. But after the bubble
burst, many snake owners could no longer _____ the cost of food, heating and shelter, or they
left the country for work elsewhere. Some left their snakes behind or turned them loose in the
countryside, leading to some _____ encounters.

A California king snake _____ found late last year in a vacant store in Dublin, a 15-foot
python turned up in a garden in Mullingar, a corn snake was found in a trash bin in
Clondalkin in South Dublin, and an aggressive rat snake was _____ in a shed in County
Meath, northwest of Dublin, an area dotted with sprawling houses built _____ the boom.

The recession is the thing thats absolutely causing this, said Kevin Cunningham, a 37-
year-old animal lover who _____ the National Exotic Animal Sanctuary after he left his job at
a Dublin nightclub. He has transformed an old single-room schoolhouse near Ballivor, a
hamlet in the Meath countryside, _____ a reptile sanctuary.

It was about status, Mr. Cunningham said as he waved to a four-foot red iguana that was
found under a sink in an _____ house in Dublin. During the boom, people _____ these
animals as conversation starters.

Animals have _____ been abandoned in greater numbers in times of famine, economic
hardship and mass emigration in Ireland, but in the past that usually meant farm animals. The
Dublin Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was taking in five or six emaciated
horses a week as _____ as 2010. Now, though, snakes are more _____ among the foundlings,
including a python named Basie that someone dropped by the side of a road.

In the Tiger economy, said P. J. Doyle, a reptile expert, young people could pay 600 quid
for a snake and the _____ equipment about $700 to $1,000 during much of the boom. But
these days, he said, some owners just drive up and _____ them somewhere.

Mr. Doyle, a hulking man with weathered skin and a gap between his teeth, helped the cruelty
prevention society _____ for an influx of reptiles around, of all dates, St. Patricks Day, when
the warmer spring weather _____ that the coldblooded snakes will be more active and more
likely to show themselves.

We always get a bump in calls around Paddys Day, Gillian Bird, the education officer at
the society, said as she pet Carl, a green iguana from South America that she named after a
colleagues boyfriend.

Irish legend holds that the country has no native snakes because St. Patrick _____ them in the
fifth century. But science says the country was snake-free long before Patricks time. When
the glaciers of the most recent ice age retreated from the British Isles more than 10,000 years
ago, Ireland was already separated from the rest of Europe by open sea, an isolated ecosystem
with a damp, chilly climate that is _____ to almost all reptiles, other than a common lizard.
o during

o common

o abandoned

o brought

o means

o always

o startling

o throw

o into

o kept

o lack

o brace

o recently

o was

o started

o banished

o afford

o necessary

o treated

o hostile