Killer Rats Cake
by Barbara Jo
Introduction
The Killer Rats Cake was made for Son of Zombiefest, our celebration of
the posting of our 300th review. Actually, to be fair to the rats, I don't
really know that they killed the man they're eating. It's possible that
they simply came upon the severed arm and decided it would make a tasty
snack. That's why I referred to it through much of this process as the
Rat-Arm Cake, but Barbara May pointed out, and I agreed, that was a very
uninspiring title, so The Killer Rats Cake it became.
Like its illustrious predecessor, The Zombie Cake, The Killer Rats Cake
began life as a pattern for a carved pumpkin. Both the pumpkin and the
cake depict a severed human arm being devoured by three large, ugly rats.
Well, ugly in their cake incarnation, at any rate; they're sort of cute on
the pumpkin. The cake arm was constructed in layers, from the inside out,
so that a slice of the cake looked like a cross-section of an arm,
complete with ulna, radius, bone marrow, skin, etc. Admittedly, this did
not make for a spectacularly dynamic presentation, at least as compared to
the cakes that burned or shot blood or secreted bodily fluids, but I think
it was just as effective, in its understated fashion. Sometimes even I opt
for subtlety and finesse over gaudy drama.
Because the cake was created in several separate segments, then assembled,
I'm going break up this narrative accordingly, although in reality these
processes were occurring simultaneously.
continue to The Rats
