Read the passage below. Discuss what strategies you used to determine the meaning of the underlined words. It came on great oiled, resilient, striding legs. It towered thirty feet above half of the trees, a great evil god, folding its
delicate watchmaker's claws close to its oily reptilian chest. Each lower leg was a piston, a thousand pounds of white
bone, sunk in thick ropes of muscle, sheathed over in a gleam of pebbled skin like the mail of a terrible warrior. Each
thigh was a tone of meat, ivory, and steel mesh. And from the great breathing cage of the upper body those two
delicate arms dangles out front, arms with hands which might pick up and examine men like toys, while the snake
neck coiled. And the head it self, a ton of sculptured stone, lifted easily upon the sky. Its mouth gaped, exposing a
fence of teeth like daggers. Its eyes rolled, ostrich eggs, empty of all expression save hunger. It closed its mouth in a
death grin. It ran, pelvic bones crushing aside trees and bushes, its taloned feet clawing damp earth, leaving prints si)
inches deep wherever it settled its weight. It ran with a gliding ballet step, far too poised and balanced for its ten tons.
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