BTW - I did a take on the armadillo cake - a rat cake
one of our project managers was over the construction of the new main library downtown. Well he saw rats ALL the time. One came out the night they were doing this dedication and this guy was supposed to turn on the lights inside the building when given a cue (the party was to show the view from another 'monument' while the library was being built) and a rat came out and scared him and he almost missed the cue. Another time the architect from NYC was staying in a hotel that sort of overlooked the project site and he looked down from his room one night and there was a rat in the courtyard and it was SO BIG he could see it from his room which was high up. And then the night of a private fru fru patrons' party, the ladies came to him and told him that the rats were out in the room where the food was running from under one table to another so he was on rat patrol to hopefully keep one from coming out and scaring the big money patrons.
By the end of that job, he had enough and decided to retire. So for his retirement party, I called a bakery downtown to see if they would make me a red velvet rat cake and the guy that answered the phone nearly fell out, couldn't continue talking to me so he put the owner on the phone. Having had her shop downtown for twentysomething years, she knew all too well of the rats and had her own stories. She made me a great three dimensional rat complete with rat droppings (which I didn't request or expect). I had to walk back to the office about 5 blocks carrying this rat cake and it was only covered by plastic wrap so you can imagine the stares. But when he sliced into it the reactions were priceless since only one person knew what I was up to.
Now if we hd just put some raspberry filling or something in there.....