A quick check of his schedule showed his next educational tour wasn’t for another fifteen or so minutes, giving him plenty of time to go bid good morning to his favorite two dolphins. Micah enjoyed leading the educational tours, too. Like most people who worked at a nonprofit, his job duties were many and constantly evolving. His just involved giant sea turtles, dolphins and the occasional cranky electric eel. And school children. Sometimes the eels were easier to deal with. They didn’t try and throw popcorn into a tank full of manta rays.
As Micah approached the tank where Bonnie and Silver could be found swimming around, he caught sight of a small child, about six or seven, clutching a stuffed toy. She looked up, wide-eyed, when Micah approached.
“A dolphin,” she said, softly, pointing. “They got dolphins in there. Just like Octonauts!”
Micah grinned, going down on his haunches. He was wearing his bright blue staff shirt, which he was sure her guardians had denoted meant safe grown-up to talk to. “Yeah, we do. We have two. That one, her name’s Bonnie. She’s named after a famous pirate! Do you know what pirates are?”
The little girl nodded wisely. “In movies and stuff.”
“That’s right! Bonnie’s named after Anne Bonny.” Micah pointed at the tank. “When she gets better, she’s going back in the ocean!”
The little girl lifted her stuffed animal—a manatee—and hugged it. “What’s wrong with her?”
“She got all caught up in a net,” Micah said, adding quickly, “but she’ll be okay.”
There was a concerned sniff. “Promise?”
Micah nodded and placed a hand on his heart. “Promise.”
“What about the other one? Is she gonna go home, too?”
Charmed, Micah gave a little laugh. “That’s Silver, but he lives here all the time. He was hurt when he was real little, and got used to being around people. So he wanted to stay here, and we said, okay, sure, but you gotta pull your weight. You know what that means?”
She shook her head.
“It means there’s no such thing as a free lunch!” Micah stood up and whistled sharply. The other dolphin, Silver, leaped gracefully from the water and performed a trick. The little girl clapped in delight.
“You made that dolphin jump up!” She tried whistling, which was adorable, but her little face fell when she realized it wasn’t making the dolphin do anything. “How’d you do that?”
“Lots of training,” Micah said, solemnly. “You have to go to school for a long time to learn how to whistle to dolphins.”
She nodded. “Okay! I’m gonna ask my teacher if she knows. She’s smart, she knows about math.”
“Ava! What are you doing?”
Micah turned as a couple of anxious-looking women came around the corner, pushing a stroller. “Hi!” he said, wanting to put them at ease. “I’m just talking to—is it Ava?—here about our dolphins.”
“Mama, Mom, the dolphin is a lady pirate that got stuck in a net and now she’s gonna go out ’sploring! Like a pirate! But the other dolphin Silver lives here now and when you whistle he jumps in the air!” Ava clearly wasn’t too concerned about making her parents worry. “M’gonna ask my teacher if I can learn how to whistle at dolphins ’cause it takes a loooooong time and you can only learn it in school.” She made a face. “Maybe me ’n’ Sprinkles will be like Bonnie and go ’sploring, that might take less time and I don’t gotta learn math.”
Sprinkles must be the manatee, by the way Ava was holding the stuffed animal up and wriggling it around. She was certainly cute.
“Maybe go exploring where we can see you,” one of the women said, shaking her head. “That’s the rule, remember what happened last time?”
“Yester time I ran off to see some things,” Ava informed Micah. “But I got lost an’ cried until somebody found me.”
“Last time, not yester time,” her mom corrected. She smiled at Micah. “I hope she wasn’t bothering you! We told her that people that worked for the aquarium were good to talk to, but we meant, you know, maybe asking how to find her missing moms.”
“It’s okay,” Micah assured them both. “She wasn’t bothering me, not at all. I do this a lot.” Kids did like to wander around this place. Not that Micah could blame them; he’d been wandering around aquariums since he first went to one and realized it was a place that existed and that people actually worked there. He waved to Ava, who disappeared looking only mildly apologetic about vanishing.
“Hey there,” Micah said, looking into the tank after Ava and her moms went over to see the manatees. “Bonnie girl, you feeling okay today?” He held his hand up, and Bonnie swam over, using her fin to propel herself up and nudge his palm. He smiled. She was young, only about five years, and social with humans—having figured out pretty quick it got her a lot of fish. He’d miss her when she was ready to go back into the wild, but that was par for the course by now. She didn’t belong in an aquarium or a tuna net. But if she wasn’t released soon, she’d get too accustomed to the place and would be unable to fend for herself.
The dolphin chirped and swam off, and Micah consulted his tablet for his to-do list. He still couldn’t believe, even after all this time, that he worked here. Jobs like his were few and far between, and scoring his entry-level position seven years ago had been a dream come true. Thousands of hopeful applicants, and he knew that being a hometown boy hadn’t done anything to get him noticed, though the years he’d spent as a volunteer through high school and college had definitely helped when he’d applied for one of the few coveted paid positions. Now he was living his dream, head animal researcher for the rescue and rehab program, and every day he still pinched himself when he parked in his spot in the staff lot. It wasn’t often you got to live your childhood dream, and sure, maybe he’d given up some things, but it was totally worth it. People had been telling him for years that while there were plenty of jobs researching in his field, active animal care and work positions weren’t easy to come by.
Micah didn’t mind research, but his real passion was helping the animals recover from accidents and head back out where they belonged. While he hadn’t initially been sure he’d like the educational component, it turned out he had a real knack for engaging with the curious children—and curious adults—who came to visit the aquarium. The facility depended on the money these visitors paid for their entrance fees, their lunches and their stuffed manatees named Sprinkles. Micah found he preferred telling kids about the dangers of throwing plastic rings away more than writing research articles any day; he liked to think his tours were informative and enjoyable enough to pull a few annual donations out of visitors and season pass purchases out of locals. Which, he should probably read up on the tour he was going to have to give—there were some groups who would listen to him wax enthusiastic about new methods of humane tracking, and some who mostly wanted to know how much Dudley weighed and could they keep a dolphin in a bathtub?