Page 107 - November 2020

107
Litterateur
November 2020

An Army of Frogs

“The what?” shrugged Greg.

“It’s the ass, you ass,” whispered Badra.

The moment Greg’s hand squeezed around his frog and felt it inhaling and exhaling,
he wanted to run outside and set it free instead of lining up in the back of the
classroom, waiting his turn to use the scale. But he figured what would the point of
freeing it be? There aren’t any ponds around here. It would just get squashed by a
car or some punk would shove a firecracker down its throat.

After all the students measured and weighed their frogs and returned to their desks,
Mrs. Worton pulled her desk to the center of the room to talk them through the
surgery while slicing up her very own frog. “Our first step will be to decapitate the

frog with your special dissection scissors and then pith its spinal cord with the
pithing needle on your tray. The frog will twitch. Pithing greatly reduces the
incidence and intensity of muscle contractions, thus simplifying the dissection.”

Most of the class scrunched their faces with revulsion as they followed Mrs.
Worton’s commands.

“As you hold the frog’s head, “continued Mrs. Worton, “squeeze it with your thumb
and index finger to open its mouth for easier insertion of the scissors into the
mouth. Hold your frog against the tray with your palm as it may twitch while you are
decapitating it.”

Greg did as he was told and placed the lower scissor blade inside his frog’s mouth
while the outer blade rested on the back of the frog’s head. Without applying much
force, he was
surprised how quickly the head was severed from the body. His frog twitched and
contorted so violently that it jerked out of his hand and fell to the floor, where it

flopped about like an awkward break-dancer trying to spin into a finale.

Mrs. Worton hurried over, responding to the many shrieks of disgust surrounding
Greg’s desk. “Didn’t I tell you to pith your frog?” she asked.

Greg just stared at her as she picked up his headless frog and dropped it onto his
tray. It continued to twitch. She handed him a pair of forceps and ordered him to lift
the skin of the abdomen with them before cutting into the skin, from left to right.