“Now where is that darn thang?”
Granny Smith was rummaging around the kitchen cabinets for her prized pie tin. Today she was undergoing yet another attempt at recreating the apple pie her late daughter Pear Butter – better known as Buttercup – used to make. If you had told her ten moons prior that she would give praise to an apple pie made by a Pear, she’d scoff and say you were as nuts as a squirrel hanging around a fox’s den. For that matter, she never would have predicted the courtship and marriage of her son Bright Mac to an heir of a family hers was always butting heads with.
Lowering her head, Granny let out a sigh of mourning for her son and daughter-in-law. Losing her husband was hard enough, but to lose two Apple family members in one day was a serious punch in the gut. Baby Apple Bloom would have to grow up without her parents, the farm would have eight less hooves on deck, and most of all, the family would have two less kind, comforting souls. It was up to her, Big Mac, and Applejack to hold down the fort and give Apple Bloom the guidance she needed to become a capable filly, and later, a mare.
No matter where she looked in the kitchen, Granny just couldn’t find that pie tin. She suspected that Apple Bloom may have made off with it, as she was known to do that with any object in the farmhouse she could reach and move. If that were the case, Granny would have to have a talk with Applejack and Big Mac about their shared responsibility of keeping tabs on Apple Bloom if two out of three capable family members were busy with farm work or household duties.
As Apple Bloom had also been known to roam around the barn – something else Granny would have to chide Applejack and/or Big Mac about – she decided it was the next logical place to look. Granny trotted over to the barn and cracked open the door, its trademark mustiness immediately permeating her nostrils. As she traversed the barn, she scanned for any sign of a metal pie tin. Her vision may have been worsening over the years, but she could still spot her pie tin like a bird could spot a seed. Alas, the tin was nowhere to be found, but the roof seemed like it was due for maintenance.
No matter, Granny thought. She was not a mare to give up easily and was determined to find that pie tin even if she had to walk to the outskirts of Sweet Apple Acres to find it. And so she did, stopping at the top of the hill on the east side of the farm where Saddle Lake was down below. By sheer miracle, she spotted a certain shine of metal in Celestia’s sun…
“Mah tin!”
How it got there was anypony’s guess. Maybe the strong wind they had the other day blew it over there from wherever Apple Bloom was playing with it. Further speculation could wait, however, as there was one big issue at hoof – the tin was floating in the lake!
Actually, it was a problem in two parts. The first was that Granny knew that it was bound to rust at this rate, as it was good old-fashioned carbon steel rather than this newfangled stainless-steel Madly Rich had been peddling at his store as of late. Nevertheless, that was easily solved by some rust remover. The second and bigger part of the problem was that Granny was not about to get in the lake and retrieve that tin herself. Not after that record-breaking but retrospectively stupid high dive she took as a younger mare. As she would tell her grandfoals, she has been unable to make contact with a pool of water following the toll that jump took on her rear, not to mention her body’s further degrading with age. If only Big Macintosh or Applejack – both good swimmers – were around to get it. Alas, both had taken Apple Bloom into town that day so she could socialize with other foals. It was a good thing for them to do, but the timing couldn’t have been any more inconvenient.
Granny carefully went back down the hill towards the farm, thinking of a solution to this predicament. As she reached the barn/farmhouse, she heard a certain squeal, and that’s when it hit her.
“The pigs! Eh, them beasts oughta make ‘emselves useful fer once!”
Truth be told, the Apple family only kept pigs to symbolize their value of hospitality. Granny’s mother told her that it all started one night when two pigs turned up on their farm in a weakened state and started snacking on their crops. Though both her mother and father were angry, they knew the pigs would keep coming back no matter what they did to keep them out, so they decided to care for them. As one pig turned out to be male and the other turned out to be female, they ended up…you know…and the rest was history.
Granny somehow thought she could get one of the pigs to swim out to the middle of the lake, grab the tin, and bring it back to shore. She went into the farmhouse and brought out from the closet a swim ring and a pair of goggles Applejack and Big Macintosh used for their swimming excursions. She then went out to get one of the pigs, beckoning it to follow her.
Once they reached the lake, Granny Smith slipped the pair of goggles onto the pig’s head (because she did not want it to squeal its lungs out should its eyes hit the water) and with, great difficulty, rolled the pig on to the swim ring and shoved it into the water.
As the lake began to receive the floating pig, Granny Smith decided the easiest way to get the tin would be to have a pig do the backstroke.
Unfortunately, she had no idea how to teach it such a technique.
Author's Note
And so I attempt fanfiction once more. I'd like to think that this one, being based on an existing vignette from the show, is more polished than my previous and only other story here, which was a (relatively) original idea of mine that hasn't gone anywhere.
The location of Sweet Apple Acres relative to the lake is only a guess of mine based on the official map of Equestria, which doesn't label Sweet Apple Acres but does have Saddle Lake over a hill on the east side of Ponyville. If it was ever implied or shown otherwise on the show, I'm sorry. I also don't know if the story Applejack started to tell in the episode actually happened in the timeframe I set it in.
The name of Filthy Rich's father - Madly Rich - is just one I made up. If any of you want to use it, be my guest.
