I'm not in Paris Wombat Cupcake
Wednesday, April 21, 2010 at 11:50AM
The Lone Baker in "wombat cupcake', Australia, cupcake, wombat

I'm not in Paris wombat cupake. Fondant covered vanilla custard cake with fondant Wombat.

When I'm baking I'm in my own little world, as the kitchen fills with the perfume of French vanilla extract, I imagine I'm in Paris strolling down the grandiose Avenue des Champs-Elysées, gazing at the works of Vermeer & Rembrandt at the Louvre or relishing the last macaron in the Ladurée box. But try as my might sometimes I can't keep Paris in my thoughts over the hissing of the possums or the threat of that great hairy legged spider crawling towards me. My personal battle with Australian wildlife started with....

Emu; The vegemite sandwich was squeezed between my fingers, I could hear "drop the sandwich", "drop the sandwich" coming from the crowd. But I instead I ran like the wind (well, okay as fast as my chubby legs would carry me) away from the emu pursuing me. My eventual rescue by a ranger and that this happened in an animal sanctuary when I ten years old, was perhaps an early warning sign that "bush animals and I shouldn't mix". 

Brown snake; teen boyfriend & mate found a dead brown snake (one the world's deadliest snakes) & chased us girls through the wintery bush land. We screamed in a pitch only teenage girls can do & ran back to the car. With the snake as a passenger we returned to teenage boyfriends house where teenage boyfriend and mate decided to empty a large jar of nails and fill it with alcohol to preserve the snake. The boys enjoying the drama were holding the snake by the tail ready to lower the snake head first into the alcohol, with appropriate "oooo" & "yuk" sounds from us girls. It was at this point I learnt that teenage boys could scream in the same pitch as teenage girls when the snake jumped, twirled and twisted free. Thirty minutes later a Ranger rescued us as he captured the snake was quite jolly as he told us "snakes hibernate in winter", that the snake was young but could "still cause a fatal bite". 

Wombat; Teen boyfriend has been replaced by "the boyfriend". The boyfriend, his estranged father and I set off on a bush walk to water fall at the beginning of one Spring. It wasn't going well as the boyfriend picked up a yabby (freshwater crayfish) to show us and his Dad proceeding to slap it off his hand & then slapping him across the head; I didn't need to be told a yabby wasn't out bush walking, it was the curled up tail that told me it was a scorpion. On we walked with boyfriend and his Dad now not talking to each other, making the next 45 minutes of walking tense & miserable.  Then as we pushed past a bush we saw it, a storybook outcrop of ferns & flowers surrounding a glistening waterfall. We were all smiling & as I sat on the end of a log taking in the natural beauty we heard an ominous rumbling sound, I stood just in time for the wombat to come barrelling out of a log I had been sitting on. Up, up, up, I flew, down, down, down, I went 20 feet from where I started. I lost consciousness for a minute or two only to wake to the boyfriend and his Dad standing over me yelling at each other about whose fault it was. There was a major leech incident after this which included my boyfriend trying to remove leeches from me with a steak knife (I still have the scar on my hand to this day) which I could talk about in more detail, but lets skip to the Kangaroo.

Kangaroo; Different day, same boyfriend. The boyfriend decided we should go bush, we didn't need camping grounds & amenities we needed to "get back to nature". We drove through bush tracks until we found a small clearing, I needed a toilet which in the bush meant I headed off into the scrub with my roll of loo paper. Squatting with my pants around my ankles I heard a loud coughing sound, scared I turned my head to see the feet of a Kangaroo. The Kangaroo was raised to it's full height, was coughing like it had bronchitis. Terrified and still clutching my toilet paper roll I started to make a low moaning sound to attract my boyfriend for help. The boyfriend came looking for me, saw the Kangaroo, the Kangaroo reared up and was taller than my 6 foot 2 boyfriend. Boyfriend jumped backwards in fright, I lost sight of him when I heard the car starting I thought "oh my god, he is going to drive into the Kangaroo", but no he DROVE off. I was still in a squatting position & my legs were shaking, the Kangaroo stared down at me for a another five long minutes before losing interest and hopping off. Boyfriend did return a few minutes after that & said "it was just instinct to escape" that made him drive off. Did not marry that boyfriend.

Happy Baking, and may thoughts of Paris fill your day!

Article originally appeared on The Lone Baker (http://www.thelonebaker.com/).
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