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Hey, thanks for being a part
of the conversation. This is Forest Stories.

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I am the Poet in the Forest, a children's series that I pinned

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out in the nineteen nineties. Now, none of it would be possible if

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it wasn't for this forest right here
in South Charlotte, North Carolina. I

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talk about it so much that I
thought maybe it's time that you get to

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know what has inspired me for thirty
years. Thanks for being a part of

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the conversation. I'm presently standing next
to the Nikki statue. Nicki was a

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Maltese that we rescued. He was
in puppy prison. He was at a

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dog pound here in Charlotte, and
just the cutest little monster. And they

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said that no, you can't have
him. The owner would have to write

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something for us so that we could
take him home, and so we did.

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We've got a hold of the owner
and he says, look, that's

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my mama's dog. My mama passed
away. We're keeping that dog. And

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yet it was at the dog pound. And so we did win Niki over

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because the guy finally broke and he
said, look, you get me a

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twelve pack of beer, I'll give
you that dog. So we got Nicki,

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and that's when we learned that Nicki
had heartworm, and with the heartworm,

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that meant surgery, and so he
was a very special puppy to us,

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and we spend a lot of money
making sure that Nicki had a very

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very happy life. And the reason
why there's a Nicki statue here is because

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he did transition tragically. It was
a horrible nightmare and it was at a

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puppy hospital. And so this statue
is an angel whose wings are wrapped around

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something very very beautiful. You can't
see what it is, but you can

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see that the angel itself is in
peace and it is sharing the piece.

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And it's on the right side of
the forest, overlooking the valley floor in

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the way that you can see the
stream. You can see the long,

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tall green grasses and all the very
very tall trees. But the Nicky statue

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every day it's in my sight because
I always told Nicki that he would never

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ever be forgotten. Now, you
want to know something that's very very weird

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about this whole situation. I raise
doves. I have four doves. And

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what happened was on the day that
Nikki tragically transitioned, the eggs that my

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doves were sitting on one of them
hatched. Now here's the strangest thing.

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They're brown mourning doves, brown mourning
doves. The dove that hashed is still

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with me today and it's brilliantly white
like a Maltese. He thanks for being

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a part of the conversation.