Ann Cater
Charlotte’s Lost
Water Bottle
I was raised in a literary environment where reading and writing was revered. As a young child, I was encouraged to read, and to write poetry. Much of what I wrote described nature that surrounded me. I grew up on a farm in the Deep South. Wild animals strayed onto our land, including a wide variety of birds.
Visiting the zoo with my grandchildren brought back these associations of my earliest memories of farm life, and of the conversations held around the dinner table re-counting the day’s events.
The loss of Charlotte’s favorite water bottle at the zoo stimulated my imagination to create a children’s book involving the animals to help ease her sadness.
I was reminded of Aesop’s Fable, Grief and His Due, where the moral states: “It is not well, therefore, to mourn long for the departed; else grief, whose sole pleasure is in such mourning, will be quick to send fresh cause for tears.”