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// For want of a tomato 
// Story: Hoopy's Notebook 
// by Hoopy McGee 
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Transcript of Mayor Mare's speech, "There's no such thing as a small mistake", given during the all-mayor summit in Canterlot



~~*~~


Being the mayor of Ponyville has presented me with several unique challenges. We've had to put up with swarms of parasprites, the occasional rampaging star-bear, and the horrifyingly whimsical presence of the godlike Spirit of Chaos.

It is the duty of our local administration to charge headlong towards these challenges, to deal with them quickly and decisively, and to allow the ponies of our towns to live as quiet and peaceful a life as possible. I'm proud to say that my team manages these things as well as anypony possibly could, managing to maintain our small-town feel in spite of rampaging centaurs and enormous crystal palaces suddenly sprouting up on the outskirts of our town. 

However, even we are susceptible to making the occasional mistake. The incident I'm about to relate to you is what can happen when the administration fails in even the smallest of its duties. 

You may have heard about the recent... trouble we've had in Ponyville. Well, when the rubble settled and the initial investigation had wrapped up, it was discovered that the problems all began with a misplaced W10-91b—also known as the Request for Additional Rain Allotment (Under Ten Acres) form—submitted by one Miss Cherry Tomato, who wanted us to provide an extra 2.4 inches of rain to her field over the course of a week. 

The form, the investigation later discovered, had been lost in the inbox of assistant mayor Typeset, sandwiched between a Harvest Festival budget report and a bundle of complaints about a certain pegasus who kept buzzing the town at high speeds and rattling the townspony’s windows in their panes. 

Thus it was that Cherry Tomato’s fields stayed dry for several days longer then they should have before the mare herself went to complain at Town Hall. Typeset assured the mare that he’d seen the form (which he had) and passed it on to the Weather Management Team (which he had not), and that she needed to take her complaint directly to their office. 

Cherry Tomato then marched directly to the Weather Management office. When informed by the weather office that they'd never received her form and that she’d need to re-submit it and wait an additional week for it to process, the resultant shouting could be heard all the way over at Ponyville Elementary, where local teacher Miss Cheerilee found her geography lesson co-opted by a dozen curious foals inquiring after the meaning of several newly-learned words. 

I could show you the stack of complaints I received from irate parents, but I'm sure you can imagine. 

When interviewed later, Miss Tomato reported that, though her emotional state was “a little vexed”, she nevertheless remained calm and polite to the pegasi on the Weather Team. When asked about conflicting reports that characterized her voice as “shrill”, her language as “inappropriate for foals” and her behavior as “terrifying beyond all comprehension”, Miss Tomato admitted to being “perhaps more than just a little vexed.” 

Nevertheless, Cherry Tomato’s fields did get their rain, albeit nearly two weeks later than she would have liked. The resulting flood swept away most of her topsoil as well as moving her house to a new location at the bottom of a nearby hill. This, of course, completely destroyed the entire crop of previously-dehydrated cherry tomatoes. 

When a somewhat waterlogged Cherry Tomato, described as “creepily calm” by several eye-witnesses, went to the Weather Management Team's office to inquire about the sudden flood that had wiped out her farm, it was discovered that somepony on the weather team had, while transcribing the W10-91b onto a work order, somehow neglected to include the decimal point from the 2.4 inches requested, resulting 24 inches of rain being delivered. Not only that, but the "rush" stamp that she'd insisted upon during her previous visit—assuming that it meant that she'd receive the rain as soon as possible—instead meant that the rain would all be delivered within the span of half an hour rather than over the course of a week. 

Considering how long it took the pegasi to gather the extra clouds and moisture needed for that much rain, I suspect that this so-called "simple mistake" may have been in retaliation for Miss Tomato's earlier outburst. Investigations are still underway. 

Miss Tomato, naturally enough, expressed her displeasure a this revelation in a most vocal fashion. I wish to take a moment to acknowledge the foresight of Miss Cheerilee, who, having learned from the previous incident, was quick to start up a phonograph at the highest possible volume the moment the distant shouting started. 

The loss of Cherry Tomato’s crops led to a region-wide shortage of cherry tomatoes, a moderately expensive lawsuit against the Weather Team and the town of Ponyville, and a very minor change in the diets of the local ponies. 

For most towns in Equestria, this would have been the end of it. Life would have gone on more or less as usual, except for the alterations of recipes calling for cherry tomatoes. It would have been the talk of the town for a week, maybe two, but then everypony would have just gone on with their lives. 

Most towns, however, do not have to deal with the very particular dietary requirements of one Angel Bunny. 

For those not familiar with him, Angel Bunny is a small, cuddly-looking white rabbit who embodies the phrase "looks can be deceiving." His caretaker, one Miss Fluttershy, expends a tremendous amount of effort every day to make certain that he gets exactly the meal he wants (reports of domestic abuse should she fail to please him have gone as yet unproven, but are still under investigation). It was shortly after the flooding of Cherry Tomato's cherry tomatoes that Angel decided he wanted a specific salad for his afternoon repast. One that, of course, called for several cherry tomatoes. 

Miss Fluttershy, an unassuming pegasus mare whose name fits her quite succinctly, went into town to find fresh ingredients for the salad. When it came time to purchase the cherry tomatoes, however, she ran into a snag: there were only four left in the entirety of Ponyville, just barely enough to make Angel's salad. 

The vendor, a dirt-brown stallion whose name has been redacted from all publicly-accessible reports in order to avoid the possibility of a lynching, offered to sell the tomatoes to the obviously-desperate mare for a Princess' ransom. When Fluttershy responded that she couldn't possibly pay that much, and would he consider accepting something in trade, this less-than-sterling example of stallionhood reportedly waggled his eyebrows at her, delivered the poor mare a salacious look, and suggested that there were "other ways that she could pay, if you know what I mean, wink-wink." 

According to witness reports, Fluttershy instantly flushed bright red, bleated like a startled goat and fainted on the spot. This was witnessed by several ponies, one of whom was Rainbow Dash—national hero and newest Wonderbolt member, and who happens to be a dear friend of Fluttershy. Insistent demands to know what happened to her friend resulted in a now-panicked stallion running for his life from an enraged Rainbow Dash, and the ensuing chase caused damage to the market estimated to reach into the thousands of bits. 

It didn't end there, unfortunately. Angel Bunny, apparently annoyed that his lunch had been delayed, went after Fluttershy to see what was taking so long. He came upon her lying on the ground, newly returned to consciousness but still clearly out of sorts and surrounded by mares who were comforting her. Meanwhile, angry shouts, terrified screams, and loud crashes were sounding in various places around the market square. 

What went through the tiny rabbit's mind is anypony's guess. Perhaps he was out of sorts due to low blood sugar. Perhaps he was enraged by the delay in his lunch. Perhaps, as is the leading theory, he thought that his caretaker had been attacked. Whatever the case may be, the results were the same: Angel Bunny went to war. 

Word was passed to all of the other animals in the area, most of whom knew Fluttershy personally, many of whom had been cared for by her at some point, and all of whom loved her dearly. Apparently, they decided to let their feelings on the subject of her potential abuse be known. 

Ponyville's first warning was an enormous flock of birds that stretched across the horizon and blotted out the sun. The lack of birdsong made them eerily silent, which was why they were almost upon the town before they were noticed. This was followed by a rumbling in the ground, caused by a mass of mice, voles, moles, squirrels, rabbits, and other small creatures charging the town, in numbers so vast that the ground as far as the eye could see looked like a living, furry carpet. Some witnesses even reported an enormous grizzly bear shaking the ground beneath his massive paws as he roared his way towards town. 

The press later called it the Battle of Ponyville, which I feel incorrectly implies that there was some hope of fighting back. The truth is, we never stood a chance. 

Hours later, when it was done and the dust settled, shell-shocked ponies cautiously crept from their hiding places to discover that there was no garden unspoiled, no loafs of bread un-nibbled, no bags of grain left intact, and scarcely a square inch of space that hadn't been pooped upon. Even those ponies who locked themselves inside their homes found out that small rodents could fit in through almost any crack. Nowhere was save from the vengeance of the fuzzy horde. 

Cleanup took almost a week to complete. Counseling for those present during the attack is ongoing. Fluttershy has reported being "pleasantly surprised" by how inexpensive fresh fruits and vegetables have recently become at the market, though she doesn't appear to have noticed that those savings don't extend to anypony else. 

Some may call that an abuse of mayoral privilege. I call it disaster prevention. 

As for our unnamed salespony, he was taken into a small room in Town Hall, where he was told exactly how badly he'd messed up. Fluttershy, you see, is not only a national hero in her own right, she is also a close personal friend with each and every Equestrian Princess, not to mention with Discord, the Spirit of Chaos himself. Last I heard, our hapless salespony had decided to try his hoof overcharging the locals in some backwoods town in the Minos empire. I wish him the best; minotaurs are known for being rather touchy when they think they're being swindled.  

All of this, because one pony lost track of an official form. A small mistake, some might say. To which I would reply, "No mistake is smaller than its consequences."