Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions that follow:
Early in the New Year of 1956, I travelled to Southern Iraq. By then it had crossed my mind that I should like to keep an otter instead of a dog, and that Camusfearna, ringed by water a stone’s throw from its door, would be an eminently suitable spot for this experiment.

1. When did the narrator decide to keep an otter instead of a dog as a pet?
2. Why is Camusfearna suitable for keeping an otter?
3. What does the expression ‘a stone’s throw’ here mean?

Read the following passages carefully and answer the questions that follow:
My friend left, and I arranged to meet him in a week’s time. Five days later, my mail arrived.
I carried it to my bedroom to read, and there, squatting on the floor, were two Arabs; beside them lay a sack that squirmed from time to time. They handed me a note from my friend: “Here is your otter...”

1. Whom did he find sitting on the floor?
2. What had they brought?
3. Give the meaning of ‘squatting’.

Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions that follow:
With the opening of that sack began a phase of my life that has not yet ended, and may, for all I know, not end before I do. It is, in effect, a thraldom to otters, an otter fixation, that I have since found to be shared by most other people, who have ever owned one.

1. What did the sack contain?
2. What is the common belief about the people who own an otter?
3. What does the phrase ‘may not end before I do’ indicate?

Read the following passages carefully and answer the questions that follow:
I watched, amazed; in less than a minute he had turned the tap far enough to produce a trickle of water, and after a moment or two achieved the full flow. He had been lucky to turn the tap the right way.

1. What surprised the narrator?
2. Who does ‘He’ here refer?
3. Find a word from the passage that means ‘surprised’.