Does Not Contain Actual Shamrocks
Shamrock Shake
Admiral Biscuit
Tornado patrols meant going where the weather was, or at least going near where the weather was going to be in order to establish a home base.
Back in Equestria, of course, the pegasi made most of the weather. As a result, it was where they said it was going to be and what they said it was going to be. On Earth, that wasn’t the case, and there were week-by-week discussions about the most fertile ground for tornadoes.
When the tornado team had set up their first encampment at a Best Western in Texas, they had rated a front-page article in the newspaper, and a couple days of interviews and editorials in the second section for the week following. Doctor Tetsuya hadn’t approved—especially since the interviews focused less on his scientific work and more on the teams that found, measured, and attempted to break up the tornadoes.
He’d still done an interview, and so had Bill and Jo. Paradise had spoken for the team, and a few pegasi had rated separate interviews. Velvet Light had muddled her way through one interview without entirely understanding what was happening—the reporter had caught her in the parking lot of the Dillons while covering the latest iPhone craze at the AT&T store. Her answers to questions hadn’t been anything special, but the fact that she was sporting a gauze bandage around a foreleg as a result of windblown debris made her immediately sympathetic and the plucky underdog to an audience who knew full well the carnage a tornado could bring.
As the months went by, their fame and notoriety faded, at least in the eyes of the press. Their arrival at a new hotel was no longer newsworthy, although after a severe storm there was always some video footage of the ponies in action. At first, they were shaky cell-phone videos taken by locals, until some of the pegasi started wearing GoPros.
Brinkley, Arkansas wasn’t known for much. It was an unremarkable town located near where the thought to be extinct ivory-billed woodpecker was rediscovered; it was also surrounded by rice fields and popular for duck hunters in the late fall and early winter. It also was about halfway between Little Rock and Memphis, and often used that in some of their advertising campaigns.
It was mostly destroyed by a F4 tornado in 1909, and the local Days Inn was, for now, the headquarters of a dozen storm-fighting pegasi and their human crew, none of whom knew the history of the town.
They did know that the Days Inn had a continental breakfast. It wasn’t great.
Most mornings when they weren’t on the road, the ponies and some of their human crew would visit the Waffle House, to the point that they’d become temporary regulars. The first day, the waitresses had been caught off-guard at a dozen pegasi crowding into booths; now it had shifted to ‘Do you want the usual, hon?’
Los Pinos was next to the hotel, and Pizza Hut was close. They didn’t deliver, but Dusty’s van could carry plenty of pizza, and if it wasn’t available, most of the pegasi were competent enough fliers to carry a couple boxes on their back over the interstate and back to the hotel.
Even McDonald’s saw the ponies enough that the staff no longer freaked out if a pegaus came inside or made her way through the drive-through lane for some McCafe coffees or a sack of Filet-O-Fishes.
A couple of the more tech-savvy pegasi had even figured out the McDonald’s app.
•••
Thus it was one otherwise ordinary Friday afternoon that a lone pegasus made her way into the McLobby and trotted up to the counter. A few people in the lobby snapped pictures of her to post on their Facebook pages or Instagrams or whatever the kids these days are using, but for the most part the tornado ponies had become a common enough sight around town that nobody really remarked on her presence.
When it was her turn at the counter, she got right to the point. “One Shamrock shake, please.”
The clerk hesitated over the screen. “What size?”
Merry May frowned. Some of the ponies struggled with the idea of things coming in different sizes, even after all this time on Earth. They’d figured out what size they wanted for things they usually ordered, but when it was something new, they were often caught off-guard.
“Small, medium, or large.” McDonald’s had been fancifing its menu to appeal to a more nuanced customer base, but hadn’t gone full Starbucks when it came to sizing.
“Med—large.”
“Whipped cream?”
“Yes, please.”
He gave her a total, told her the order number—some of the clerks gave them the receipt, but he thought it strange to see them holding the slip of thermal paper in their mouth and occasionally looking at it cross-eyed as the order display updated. He’d learned that the ponies were more attentive than some of their customers; give them an order number and they’d remember it.
•••
One thing that the McDonald’s employees—and other fast-food employees—hadn’t noticed about the ponies was their constant surprise at how fast the food was ready. While there were thermopolia that sold ready-to-eat food for ponies on the go, they only had a few options. Anyplace with a large menu where the food hadn’t already been prepared, or nearly prepared, and there was going to be a wait.
Merry May stepped away from the counter and went around the corner to study the Happy Meal Toy display. It was at a low level to appeal to children, which was also convenient for pegasi. Curiously, there was also a fire extinguisher right next to it, also at a low level.
Currently they were offering Disney-themed toys. Collectable cards and giant posters—the whole team had spent a week at Disney World as part of their winter vacation and that had been an enjoyable place. Merry May didn’t quite understand it, but she enjoyed the roller coasters and water rides. Epcot was kind of like a quick tour of the world, and they even had an Equestrian area with ponies. The public-facing side of it was adapted to appeal to humans, but it was still nice to meet new friends and chat in Ponish.
Her ear perked as her order number was called, faster than she’d expected it to be. It couldn’t have been more than a minute.
She trotted to the counter and regarded it. Color-wise, it was a complimentary green to her coat, with a swirl of whipped cream on top, just like she’d asked. In a clear plastic cup with a domed top, much like the cups for Slurpees.
Merry May grabbed the shake off the counter, grabbed a straw out of the bin with her mouth, and then settled into a seat with her frosty treat.
•••
Getting proper pony foods was a treat. At first, the wide array of unfamiliar choices and ready availability of Taco Bell were appealing, but she was a simple pony and sometimes wanted something familiar.
Some of the ponies on the team had been motivated to get a free ticket to Earth and were willing to work extreme feral weather for the opportunity. Others were in it for just the weather, and willing to work on Earth to get it—Merry May fell into the latter camp. She relished the challenge, the chance to fight a new and different kind of storm that had never been touched by the hooves of ponies. She wanted to land with aching wings, soaked to the bone from driving rain; she wanted to feel rime ice in her forelock and be tossed around by cloud-winds.
Exploring new foods was an unfortunate consequence of being on Earth. They’d learned that pet stores sold alfalfa cubes and farm supply stores sold mineral blocks; at restaurants she ordered what was as close to a proper pony food as she could get and was often disappointed. Fish was skinned and fileted and sometimes breaded and deep-fried; and nobody had pasture grasses on the menu. Not until now, anyway.
Regardless of the clover supposedly in it, the shake was an artificial green. She wouldn’t have expected anything less. She’d overheard one of the humans say that McDonalds sold fake plastic food, and couldn’t agree more. Plastic food served in plastic cups and plastic-coated paper wrappers.
What mattered was the taste. She sniffed at it and could smell lots of things, none of them clover. Maybe the whipped cream had been a mistake; maybe it was covering up the sweet grassy smell of shamrocks.
She jammed the straw into the drink and leaned over it. The first taste was whipped cream—if it could be called that. The picture on the menu of the shake with whipped cream had enticed her even though she should have known by now that food pictures lied.
Behind that, what should have been clover was instead mint and a host of artificial flavors assaulting her senses, made all the worse because she wasn’t expecting it. Yes, she’d anticipated some fakeness to a McCafe shake, but not a blatant lie about what flavor it actually was. There was no grassiness whatsoever to her alleged shamrock shake.
Merry May was a dutiful pony, so she took a second sip just to be sure. Maybe the unexpectedness of the mint had covered the clover . . . but no, there was no clover to be found in the shake.
•••
Some ponies on the team would have taken it as a learning experience, unwilling to ruffle feathers. Others might have liked the flavor, even if had been unexpected. Mint was good for digestion, after all.
Merry May was not some ponies; the store had advertised a shamrock shake and that was what she ordered and that was not what she was given. She picked it up and marched to the front counter, where she had to wait in line behind a couple county employees on their lunch break.
They were fast; they had a usual order, and then stepped to the side to let her approach.
“This isn’t what I ordered.” She plopped the plastic cup on the counter. “This is terrible, it’s all mint and there isn’t any shamrock in it at all.”
The guy at the counter was taken aback. True, he hadn’t seen Merry May in the restaurant before, but he’d seen some of the other ponies and they were polite and undemanding; he hadn’t expected for one of them to be upset with the food she had been served.
“No, they don’t have shamrocks.” He didn’t even know for sure what a shamrock was. “That’s just a name, it’s a mint-flavored shake.”
“I should have expected that,” Merry May grumbled. “Since your Filet-O-Fish isn’t a proper fish, either. But it is a fish, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “One hundred percent Alaska Pollock from sustainable Alaskan fisheries.”
She’d give him the benefit of the doubt on that; it could have started as a pollock. “I don’t want mint, I want shamrocks. Clover. Why is this not clover?”
Because humans don’t eat clover. He was wise enough to not say that. “Let me get the manager.” If there was to be a refund—which was likely in this case—it would be the manager who had to approve it anyway.
“I don’t want a manager, I want a proper shamrock shake or I want my bits back.”
“Hold on.” He scurried away, and a moment later a manager appeared, even though Merry May didn’t want one.
“What seems to be the problem, uh, miss.”
“I ordered a shamrock shake, and this hasn’t got shamrock in it.”
“No, our shamrock—”
“I know.” Merry May let out a dramatic sigh and pushed the offending shake a few inches closer to the kitchen. “Now I know. Liegende klootzakken.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He punched a few buttons on the screen and the cash drawer popped open. “Here you go.” And, since he was feeling magnanimous and she was adorable, even if she was angry. “Here’s a five dollar gift card towards anything on the menu.”
•••
A five dollar gift card didn’t fix the deep offense Merry May felt towards McDonald’s and their lying menu. A lightning strike would go a long way, but she wasn’t supposed to do that. Likewise, tearing out the electrical wires that fed the building would get her in trouble, not only with the human authorities and her handlers, but also with the other pegasi on her team, some of whom actually enjoyed a few of the items on the McMenu. Even the Filet-O-Fish.
Instead, she took flight as soon as she was out the door, peppering the McDonald’s with a few more choice insults as she flew south along the US highway that bisected the town. Maybe she couldn’t get her clover milkshake like she wanted, but she could have the next best thing—a flower smoothie.
She landed in front of an unassuming beige metal building on the corner of Pine Street: the Flower Patch. They didn’t make flower smoothies there, or even serve food in the human sense of the word—but the ladies there were nice and friendly and they had some tasty flowers and would give her a deal on flowers that weren’t nice enough to put in bouquets.
•••
Some hotels had conference rooms where they could set up their headquarters, others didn’t. The Days Inn fell into the latter category, and so the team had purchased an extra two rooms with an adjoining door, set up some tables, and used it as an all-purpose room.
Besides the equipment packs, laptop computers, and a bank of coffee makers in the kitchenette, it also had the team’s blender. Merry May wasn’t the only pony who loved smoothies, blended finer than any in all of Equestria.
There was almost always at least some pony or person hanging out in the room, if they weren’t on the road somewhere. Today, there was only one pony in the room—Paradise, who was snoozing in the papasan. Rocky Storm had discovered it at a Crate and Barrel (which didn’t sell crates or barrels) and fallen in love with it. It was really comfy, almost as good as a cloud.
Merry May went right into the kitchen and started blending her smoothie, pouring it into a tall glass once it was wholly homogenized, then she sat down at one of the tables to enjoy her snack.
She was halfway done when Dewdrop came in, a brown paper McSack held in his mouth. He sat across from her, set it on the table, and pulled out a Shamrock shake. “Hey, have you tried one of these yet? They’re tasty!”
Also LikedSimilarAuthor
- Admiral Biscuit · 2.6k words · 239 2 · 2k views
- Admiral Biscuit · 5.1k words · 161 2 · 1.5k views
- Admiral Biscuit · 3.8k words · 107 0 · 1.1k views
- Admiral Biscuit · 3.1k words · 248 1 · 2.4k views
- Admiral Biscuit · 2.1k words · 63 1 · 549 views
- Admiral Biscuit · 10k words · 73 3 · 877 views
- Admiral Biscuit · 6.7k words · 83 2 · 739 views
- Admiral Biscuit · 3.5k words · 156 4 · 2.1k views
Stats
Page generated in 0.106 seconds
Total duration
983 users online
203,499 hits today, 2,244,100 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Calling ordinary mundane things sourced from McDonalds, McX is a stroke of brilliance
Actually clover is edible, although some might have trouble with it in large quantities. There would be nothing wrong with having a flurry with enough clover to make it a clover flurry. I find it odd that restaurants wouldn't crop up almost immediately with pony options if ponies were around.
Posted to
Admiral Biscuit's Fleet
Pony On Earth folder
They didn't specify that the continent was Atlantis -and the breakfast was what destroyed it.
Folklore
"Vervain, trefoil, John's wort, dill
Frustrate witches of their will."
Vervain & (Saint) John's wort are some of the things you can buy as health food. Trefoil = shamrock, symbol of Ireland.
Dill is the stuff in dill pickles. McDonald's puts them on hamburgers. IMO, this protects them from being cursed by witches.
Oh & their Kid's Meal was rated the Best Buy in a survey I saw online many moons ago.
11532545
It's a dilly of a pickle.
This story inspired me to check McDonald's Shamrock Shake page to see whether the whipped cream actually is whipped cream. It is, although I was more surprised to find out that the shake itself contains real (reduced fat) ice cream.
However, the picture depicts the shake in a drinking glass made of actual glass. At what McDonald's are you going to get that?
A magical talking pegasus visiting a fast food restaurant in the real world? Sure. But an average McDonald's employee able to supply that fact off the top of his head? That was what broke my suspension of disbelief.
11532641
One of the cooler ones. There's a few that are like normal restaurants, at least one where you can get lobster rolls, and one in Texas that is safari-themed.
a sweet short story i love it.
but as to the Shamrock shake nope nope nope to sweet for me.
I remember the first Shamrock Shakes. They were really good.
That was back in the ancient days when McDonalds still made the burgers and hot cakes on a griddle.
Everything was better back then... I'm going to reset the world to the 80's! WITH EXPERIMENTAL TIME TRAVEL TECHNOLOGY I STOLE FROM AREA 51!!! Sure, it may destroy all reality, but given how awful reality is right now, it's CLEARLY worth the risk... for better-tasting Shamrock Shakes!
And on that final note "Dewdrop" is now wearing the remainder of a "Flower smoothie "! Great story! Oh and if you're really old...the first Shamrock shakes to come out had a green color that seams to glow....AKA. Fallout.
11532524 It depends on the species of clover. Common white clover is not very digestible raw, but cooking solves that. The aerial portions of white clover also are effective against tapeworm infestations. Red clover flowers can be used to make jelly and tisanes, but it contains coumarin derivatives and should not be consumed by people with coagulation disorders.
There are 300 species of true clovers all over the world.
Also, shamrock is an interchangeable term between clover and several species of Oxalis, which are also called wood sorrels. These are also edible in moderation, and contain tart-tasting oxalic acid. People with kidney problems should not eat sorrels.
The most commonly accepted clover as the traditional shamrock is the clover species Trifolium dubium.
11532641 100% real dolphin beaten to death in a Japanese bay!
11532641
It is a work of fiction.
11532499 It's a very old joke.
"... grumble mutter... razzinfrazzin McDonalds... razzinfrazzin milkshakes..."
"Whoa hey, little pony girl! What's got you so upset?"
"Who wants- hey, aren't you that human actor and former wrestler Dwayne Johnson?"
"Yeah, not so loud, okay? I just stopped in this town for a quick meal."
"Well, if you're getting a milkshake, don't get one of those green ones."
"Why not? I like 'em, and they only make them about one week a year."
"Because... that milkshake is a sham, Rock."
Poor May. I am willing to bet that the laws in Equestria regaurding truthfulness in advertising are very different then here in America.
11532865
They don't seem to have laws for that sort of thing. Every episode involving the Flimflam Brothers makes that more clear.
I hate to nitpick, but the term shows up enough times in the story that it actually became rather noticeable. McDonalds calls their sandwich the "Filet-O-Fish" (all one hyphenated monstrosity of a word and one less F than it ought to have).
Very amusing premise, though. I quite enjoyed it.
>Shakes detected
It is nice that the TornadoPonies are still killing tornadoes.
Biscuit, is there a way for you to link all of the Tornado Team stories? There are a few I think.
Huh, didn't know Ponish was so similar to Dutch
11532499
I wish I could take credit for coming up with that, but it's been around for a long time.
11532524
It is, and I've eaten it. The flowers are also edible (at least in part, IIRC) and I'm almost certain that you can make wine from them--I think clover wine came up when I was researching flower wines.
It would depend on the concentration of ponies, I think. There are certainly restaurants and grocery stores that cater to particular dietary preferences where they have a good enough customer base, and such could also happen if there was a pony enclave somewhere, but I don't see the business case to put a hayburger on McDonald's menu (for example) in case a pony shows up.
11532532
That's a reasonable explanation. Hmm, dill pickles are kinda ubiquitous in the US, maybe that's why we don't see so many witches anymore.
Is that the one that they were marketing that filled the space between a Happy Meal and an adult meal? I thought that had gone away, but maybe not.
11532641
As I recall, some years back McDonald's improved the shake ingredients when they did the whole McCafe rebranding. So I'm actually not surprised that it's more natural than it was years ago. (Still won't stop me from making fun of them.)
Also, to a pony who's used to hoofmade food from home instead of the industrial processed stuff, even if their whipped cream is legally real whipped cream, and the shake is legally real reduced fat ice cream, it's probably not as good as what Merry May could get at home.
Well of course they're going to market it that way. I almost used that picture as the coverart, but reasoned that getting a Shamrock Shake in an actual glass wasn't going to be anybody's experience.
Maybe he was taught that in training, or maybe McDonald's has had an ad campaign promoting the fact.
11532732
I've never been in one that isn't the basic standard McDonald's, although it doesn't surprise me that they exist.
11532738
Thanks!
11532791
Thank you!
I can understand that. Sometimes I get one, sometimes I don't. This year I got one and then had a second for additional research and that's very much my limit.
11532794
I do feel like the flavor's changed since I was young. Whether that's my taste evolving, or they no longer use the toxic secret ingredient in them, I don't know.
I'd still call that big hot flat thing they have a griddle and that's all I can remember them ever using.
I suppose being on the quest for a proper Shamrock Shake is a good villain origin story.
11532809
I don't think that Merry May would throw it at him, I think she'd rather enjoy it. She might dump his Shamrock Shake on his head though, or just hit him with a wing as she goes by.
Thanks!
Yeah, seem to remember that decades ago they were a much more vibrant green.
11532814
Wikipedia had a breakdown of which ones Irish people thought were Shamrocks. Trifolium dubium got 51% of the vote in 1893 and 46% in 1988, making it the most popular choice. You're right that not all the ones considered shamrocks are even actually clovers.
You might know the answer to this, the four-leaved clovers are a mutation, but is that a whole plant mutation, or does it just happen on individual stems?
11532846
That's both a groaner and hilarious
I feel like Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson would get along with ponies quite well.
11532865
They're probably very different. 11532943 says--and I agree--that Flim and Flam are evidence that they give broad latitude to some claims made by salesponies; however there might be some very specific rules regarding food, for instance.
11533128
I should probably go back and fix that. I did know that it was spelled differently, but thought I'd spell it the correct way in the story.
Thank you!
11533138
We were even talking about you in the associated blog post!
11533197
Dr. Tetsuya has lots more data he needs to get, and so there's plenty of work for them.
11533261
I think just this one and Starbucks, besides their appearance in Silver Glow's Journal, of course.
I could make a library for them . . . I could also include other similar stories about pegasi working aerial jobs on Earth, like Sky Sweeper.
11533283
After a joking reference to a meme seven years ago in the comments of Silver Glow's Journal, it is now my headcanon that Ponish is the same as Dutch.
This reminds me of hearing a relative get very mad at the Harry Potter park in Universal Orlando. He got a Butterbeer and it was just a shitty caramel / cream shake soda thing. No beer or butter to be found.
Now sure, not having it be actual butter beer is understandable you wouldn't want to sell beer to the many kids who would be buying it but come on they could have at least have tried to make it somewhat like the real thing maybe a eggnog type of meme with some hops and stuff.
11533350 Wendy's and a couple of other chains use sweet pickles. BLECH. Which is why I don't eat burgers those places.
Merry May! Language young filly.
11532641
When it is slow, the crew could read the NutritionGuide.
11533467 No, no, there actually are training videos, and sometimes hires are given enough time to actually watch them. So it's not impossible that the clerk would know the factoid.
What actually IS impossible is that said clerk would give enough of a damn to actually SAY it.
11533347
People think ponies are cute and novel so having something on the menu for them lets you do advertising saying that you cater to ponies which not only gets you the pony business but also the curious, especially if said food is also human edible like an actual clover shake option.
Just wait till she tries Musk Sticks.
Do these musk sticks contain real musk?
They sure do! (Some still do)
Hmm... would ponies actually enjoy musk sticks?
Ah, suburban America, where you have to drive to cross the street.
11533635
I like to joke that the infamous Starbucks across the street from a Starbucks is because everyone's scared of the taxis in NYC. The joke is implying that being on the sidewalk would save you.