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Blum believed that toddlers should have a daily routine, so she did her best to settle into one with Junior. After her early morning shower, she had breakfast. She fed Junior his breakfast at seven A.M., making him earn each fish through his lessons.

Although he was hungry, he was bored by the lessons and at times would ignore her. Instead he’d play with a toy, or sulk on the other side of the pool, or hump the life ring or inflatable raft. This humping action was so fast, it took her a little while to understand what he was doing. He’d slide on top of the ring or the raft and pump slightly, two or three times, and then slide off, done. Normally the dolphins mated with each other several times a day.

To get him to work on his lessons instead, she would call him over, holding up a butterfish and he’d ignore her as long as he could, playing with toys, bouncing the ball in the air, chewing on a pull toy. However, she was the only living being in the pool, and he was a bored and social animal. In the end he would swim over, sullen.

She would start the lesson saying—Talk. A, B, C, Deee.

He would copy the beat of her voice, but not try to imitate the actual sounds. Instead he would make dolphin noises, blatting or clicking.

—No, Junior. Talk humanoid. You can do it. Talk. A, B, C, Deee.

He’d whistle and squeak, making more dolphin noises.

She didn’t know whether he was stubborn and didn’t want to comply, or if he genuinely didn’t understand what she wanted. She had to repeat the command again and again, before he would finally respond (perhaps accidentally) with a sound that sounded vaguely human, generally something like a vowel. She would call out praise and throw him food, but in response he would bellow out more dolphin sounds.

At 8 A.M., she would walk down to the lagoon to feed Kat and Mother and work with Tibbets on his experiments. By nine, she was back up in the homearium, vacuuming.

At ten, she made Junior practice humanoid again while she played ball with him. He seemed to have a lot more natural ability with catching and throwing the ball than with imitating human language. By this point, he was very accurate with the ball and could bop it right into her hands. Once when she was ignoring him, he hit her hard in the back of the head with it, and she yelled at him. Seeing how much he loved to catch, she used it as a reward and would not throw the ball back until he made some humanoid sound. Wanting the ball so badly, he would juke back and forth, squawking and blatting, until he finally uttered some noise that might have come from a human.

Lunch at noon was followed by quiet time. About 2 P.M., they had more lessons and then play time. At four, she wrote notes from the day and started on dinner at five. This was followed by free time and then bed at eight.