Mona’s writing appeared in:
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Out of the Cold
The baby hummingbird drank greedily from the dropper. She had named him Finn. Mona let out a pained sigh of relief. It was 3:37 a.m., exactly four hours and twenty-three minutes before her graduate committee would arrive. This Ph.D. defense was her last exam. She would have to demonstrate how torpor worked—the state somewhere in between a power nap and hibernation that hummingbirds went in and out of to withstand cold temperatures.