My Friend, The Black Fish

Chapter 5: First Day on the Job

My first week of school, well... lets just say it happened and that's all you need to know. I liked all my teachers, its just the kids that kind of suck. It was Saturday morning at 4:30 AM. I had to get up so early because we had to be there at 6 AM and we are an hour away. 

I slowly got up out of my bed and got dressed into some plain white jeans with 1 hole on both knees and a plain black shirt. I slid on my white high top converse and I put my glasses on. I grabbed my bag to pack for the day. 

I took my two wet suits. One had white and black splotches on it. This was our show wet suits and a black wet suit that just had the SeaWorld logo on it and said SeaWorld in white. I put my black strapped shoes in that would just wrap around my feet that were covered by the cloth from the wet suit so when I was walking around or on the slide out, I wouldn't slip. 

I toss in 2 water bottles, my book I'm currently reading "Shadow and Bone", my school work, and I even decided to bring my guitar to practice. Maybe Tilikum likes music? I thought. I put my orca tail necklace on and I tied my hair into a tight bun. I headed down stairs were Jamie had my packed my lunch and some snacks. 

She filled my water up and then we got in the car and started driving there.  It was the longest hour of my life. We got there and the sun was just peaking up over the clouds. We pulled up to the back were I saw a lady with brown curly hair and freckles and she looked about 5'7 in height. She smiled. I got out of the car and tossed my bag over my shoulder. 

"Hi Jamie! Thank you so much again!" she said. "Thank you Krista! When should I pick her up" Jamie responded through the window. "Around 9:30 PM" she said. Jamie nodded and told me to have a great day and she'll see me later. 

Krista guided me inside and showed me around. There was 7 killer whales in there pod. Makaio, Malia, Nalani, Trua, Katina, Kayla and Tilikum. All the whales were beautiful and the trainers were extremely nice. Krista showed me a white board that had all of our names on it, even mine was there. 

She explained that we all had jobs to do throughput the day, M means morning, A means afternoon, and D means dusk. On the other side, there was all the show times and when each whale would preform and at what times. 

Under everyone's names, there was different jobs. Under M, there was fish duty, fish sorting, and whale watching. Under A was social time and training and under D was training and tank cleaning. Krista told what the jobs mean. 

Fish duty is when I have to carry 16 bags of 60 pounds of fish each and dump them in a freezer and cover them in ice. Fish sorting is when I have to sort out what fish each whale eats. 

The list for what each whale eats fish wise was listed above the freezer. And whale watching is when 3 whales go into a socializing tank were guests can view them swim around and play with there toys. All I have to do is watch them but I could study or read while doing so.  I started my first day changing into the black wet suit in the locker room. 

I place my clothes in my bag and strapped on the black shoes. I walked out and started taking the fish bags and dumping then into the freezer. That took about 30 minutes and by the end, I was sweating. I then sorted out the whales breakfast. 

Tilikum had a compo of salmon, squid, tuna and cod. One bucket was all dead fish while the other was 10 fish that were alive to keep them active and hunting. I carried the buckets over to meet Tilikum for the first time.

 I saw a black shadow under the waves of his tank. I remembered all the strategies that Krista told me to use to call the whales over. I walked onto the slide out were the cold water hit my feet. 

I placed the buckets down on the ledge and I smacked my hand on it 3 times. The shadow began to stir and then I saw his curved dorsal fin breach the surface and make a small wave as it traveled. He rested his head on the edge of the slide out.