Complete the text with the full or bare infinitive of the verbs in brackets.
India's police pigeon service started in 1946. For me than fifty years, police stations on Orissa, an area in eastern India, used pigeons (1) ______________ (deliver) important messages to each other. every day until 1988, they tied messages to pigeons' legs and sent them off across the Indian countryside. However, as technology improved, more and more police stations decided (2) ______ (start) using radio and telephone communication instead. It looked like the pigeons would soon (3) ____________ (be) out of a job.
In 1999, after a terrible storm, the radio and telephone networks in the area were destroyed and nobody could (4) _____________ (communicate) with each other. The police needed (5) ________________ (send) messages (6) _______ (ask) for help, so they let the pigeons (7) ___________ (do) the job. Thousands of lives were saved as a result of the messages delivered by pigeons.
Unfortunately, three years later, the Orissa police pigeon service was closed. Costing $10,000 a year, they said that it was too expensive (8) ______________ (continue) running the service.