Hey, thanks for being a part of the conversation. This is Forest Stories.
I am the Poet in the Forest, a children's series that I pinned
out in the nineteen nineties. Now, none of it would be possible if
it wasn't for this forest right here in South Charlotte, North Carolina. I
talk about it so much that I thought maybe it's time that you get to
know what has inspired me for thirty years. Thanks for being a part of
the conversation. I'm presently standing next to the Nikki statue. Nicki was a
Maltese that we rescued. He was in puppy prison. He was at a
dog pound here in Charlotte, and just the cutest little monster. And they
said that no, you can't have him. The owner would have to write
something for us so that we could take him home, and so we did.
We've got a hold of the owner and he says, look, that's
my mama's dog. My mama passed away. We're keeping that dog. And
yet it was at the dog pound. And so we did win Niki over
because the guy finally broke and he said, look, you get me a
twelve pack of beer, I'll give you that dog. So we got Nicki,
and that's when we learned that Nicki had heartworm, and with the heartworm,
that meant surgery, and so he was a very special puppy to us,
and we spend a lot of money making sure that Nicki had a very
very happy life. And the reason why there's a Nicki statue here is because
he did transition tragically. It was a horrible nightmare and it was at a
puppy hospital. And so this statue is an angel whose wings are wrapped around
something very very beautiful. You can't see what it is, but you can
see that the angel itself is in peace and it is sharing the piece.
And it's on the right side of the forest, overlooking the valley floor in
the way that you can see the stream. You can see the long,
tall green grasses and all the very very tall trees. But the Nicky statue
every day it's in my sight because I always told Nicki that he would never
ever be forgotten. Now, you want to know something that's very very weird
about this whole situation. I raise doves. I have four doves. And
what happened was on the day that Nikki tragically transitioned, the eggs that my
doves were sitting on one of them hatched. Now here's the strangest thing.
They're brown mourning doves, brown mourning doves. The dove that hashed is still
with me today and it's brilliantly white like a Maltese. He thanks for being
a part of the conversation.