Inside, my mother asked me if I was going to feed the animals.

I left the bag with the frogs on the patio. From the kitchen, my mother called out to me to come in for dinner. By then, darkness was approaching, replacing the jaundiced sky. The fact that it was there always made me feel as if my backyard were a better, freer place than it really was. Beside the covered patio was a small lemon tree. Weeds peeked out of cracks in the cement path. I dropped the bike at the side of the house and unlatched the wooden door leading to the backyard. Then, after stuffing the bag into my backpack, I rode home. I poked tiny holes in the plastic bag with the tip of a pencil and tied off the top. With a few more sweeps, I collected more frogs, about six in all. I dropped it (along with a few leaves) into a garbage bag. When I pulled it out, a small yellow frog was caught in the netting.

I plunged my net, a white mesh at the end of a three-foot wooden pole, into the water and dragged it along the viscous bottom. Then, through a parting in the algae, I beheld a wondrous world of darting tadpoles and surging tree frogs. I plodded along the bank, my sneakers sinking ever so slightly into the mud. The surface was blanketed with leaves, dragonflies, and interconnecting swaths of green muck. My destination was a small pond, no bigger than a backyard swimming pool. My bicycle tires made gritty sounds in the gravelly mud. It was a late Friday afternoon in early spring, and birds were singing petulantly. With a fishing net in one hand and my bicycle handlebars in the other, I set off for the woods near my house in Southern California. Crandall, said it was an impressive project for a high school junior.īut first I had to collect some frogs. I borrowed an oscilloscope to measure current, a voltage amplifier, and some red and black electrodes. To do the experiment, I was going to have to pith the animal-sever its spinal cord while it was still alive, thus paralyzing it-before cutting it open. I decided to measure the electrical signal from the heart of a live frog. When I was fifteen, I had to do a research project for my high school biology class. Abby McDonald, Getting Over Garrett Delaney (2012) I can feel it now, aching deep behind my rib cage the way it does every time we’re together, beating a desperate rhythm: Love me. You can die of a broken heart-it’s scientific fact-and my heart has been breaking since that very first day we met.

Heart by Sandeep Jauhar