Frog Juice

We all knew it was coming but nothing could prepare us for it: Biology class.
Today’s theme: Dissecting frogs, so don’t read this entry around lunch or dinner time.
After we took a test on volcanoes, the teacher came around with a bucket. You know how in America you can buy a bucket of fried chicken? This was not that. It was a bucket full of dead frogs.
-Which one? Asked the teacher in a casual tone, like we were in one of those fancy restaurants where you get to choose your lobster.
-The biggest one. Replied my lab partner, equally casual. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t find dead frogs very relaxing. But everybody else seemed cool with it.
The teacher put the biggest one on our “operating table” and gave us 4 pins to pin down its arms and legs, like if it was going anywhere the poor dead thing. It just kind of lay there pitifully as I and my partner stabbed him with tiny needles. As we did so, quite a bit of frog juice squirted out. We had gloves but no aprons like when we did the sheep heart last year. (Note to self: Orange juice=good, frog juice=bad)
First, remove all the skin, which was one of the grossest things that we had to do. You peel off all the perfectly nice green skin to reveal white and pinkish gooey stuff, almost transparent and really really nasty. Believe me, now the skin looked like the most beautiful thing in the world.
-Ok, now cut in a vertical line through the thigh, and find a white string.
Ok, find the white gooey string thingy in the muscles of the dead frog’s thigh, got it!
Well, we started cutting and you know how some things are suppose to be juicy like a nice steak, and some things just aren’t? Well let me tell you this was extra juicy frog. Maybe that’s a good thing if you are French and like frog legs, but not if you are an 8th grader in biology class. After a few minutes of poking around in the frog’s leg, we found a gross white thread with a few pieces of black stuff clinging to it. I don’t even know what it’s called and don’t want to know because after having met it, I don’t ever want to again!
-Now cut and lift up the frog’s back plate, without cutting the white string.
Lots of juice and lots of grossness later, we had lifted up the back plate and we peeked in: juice and blood and then we saw our objective: the gross blob at the base of the spine where all the gross little white threads are all connected. Victory was ours! On the other hand, no prizes were being offered, so it was kind of a let-down. We just had this poor, sad, dead, mutilated frog. What’s the point?????