Reading Passage 1
Three-year-old Teddy Lasry was napping yesterday in his cowboy outfit at his family's Fifth Ave. apartment when he shot up in bed screaming. A 3-foot-long black-and-white snake was coiled around his left arm and had just bitten his pinky.
"The baby-sitter freaked out," said Teddy's father, David Lasry, who, along with his wife, Evelyn, was at work when the reptile showed up about 4 p.m.
The horrified nanny called 911 and the building's doorman. The doorman and two cable TV workers helped pry the snake off the boy's arm and stow it in a garbage bag, Lasry said.
Police rushed Teddy to Mount Sinai Medical Center, where his parents said he spent two hours attached to a heart monitor as a precaution in case the snake was poisonous.
It wasn't. Experts at the snakebite treatment center at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, where cops took the critter, determined it was a non-venomous California king snake.
But how did it end up in Teddy's bed?
A little sleuthing determined that the serpent had escaped two weeks ago from its cage in the apartment of a doctor whose family lives four floors below the Lasrys. The apologetic owner said his son's pet snake likely traveled up the radiator pipes and into his neighbor's apartment.
"It's a very docile, very harmless snake," he said. "It's handled by our family all the time."
Lasry, 42, a fine arts publisher, said he believed the pet was simply hungry after two weeks of cruising. Teddy's mother, Evelyn Lasry, 37, said her son seems to have gotten over his fright by thinking of himself as a hero cowboy as he rode in the back of the police cruiser to the hospital.
"I told Teddy he's a pretty snake, a nice pet snake who got out of his cage," Evelyn Lasry said. "But he asked, 'Why did he bite my finger, Mamma?' And I said, 'Because he saw that you are a big boy, Teddy, in your cowboy outfit and he got scared.'"
Reading Passage 2
What would your life be like if you were Albert Einstein? What clothes would be in your wardrobe if you were Marilyn Monroe? Or Madonna?
Well now you can discover the answer to all these questions and many more at the Fame Hotel in California. Ten miles outside Los Angeles, the Fame Hotel promises to answer the question "What if?".
When you check into the hotel, you choose a room. Each room has a name. There's Clint Eastwood on the second floor and Elvis Presley on the third floor. In total, the Fame Hotel has 32 rooms, most of which are named after stars of Hollywood or music. But there are also famous writers (Mark Twain and Agatha Christie) and even some scientists and sports stars, such as Mike Tyson.
When you enter the room, you enter the life of that person. There are pictures everywhere. The owner of the hotel has tried to fill the room with objects, clothes, even food that he thinks the stars would have liked. Marilyn Monroe's wardrobe is full of beautiful white dresses. Albert Einstein doesn't have any socks in his wardrobe because the real Einstein never wore them! If you choose Mike Tyson's room, you'll be able to practice boxing in one corner of the room. And there's even a skipping rope too!
I spoke to one guest staying in the Elvis Presley room. "I love this hotel," he said to me. "I wanted to know 'What would Elvis Presley eat for breakfast?' and now I know." That guest eats pancakes and strawberry ice cream every morning, just as Elvis liked to do. On the next table, the Einstein room's guest is eating cabbage soup!
The company plans to open another Fame Hotel in New York next year and there are plans to expand into Europe too. I look forward to staying in the Winston Churchill suite in London!
