Piney
- 1 day ago
- 1 min read
Updated: 11 hours ago
Before my parents finally relented and let me have a dog, I had to settle for a pet pine cone who I named “Piney.”
“Settled for” is not quite right because I loved Piney dearly. I dressed Piney in skirts of fabric round her middle held up by her little prickly scales and built Piney a home with a bedroom and a tiny bed in a shoebox. Piney was what I called a “baby pine cone,” about the size of a large peanut or a small grape. Piney was tiny.
One day, when giving Piney a bath with the garden hose, the high pressure nosel gave Piney an unplanned and long ride out into infinity and beyond… so far into the yard that she was never heard from again, though I looked and looked.
She escaped her shoebox dwellings because she must have had bigger dreams to chase. Maybe Piney found a nice quiet spot to let her seeds take root. Maybe Piney grew up as a majestic and royal Longleaf Pine.
It makes me smile to think that just maybe, just maybe, Piney looks down on me now from a lofty perch in the sky.