Floating cake

"The cake!, it's getting away!", My daughter Victoria who had just turned ten screamed at the top of her lungs as the rope tugging her birthday cake and our pet chicken snapped.

Wait!, you might be asking, "why in the world are you tugging a chocolate cake on a rope?". Let me tell you why, you won't believe me though. But i'll tell you anyways.

We've had a lot of rain lately, and I mean a lot, it hasn't been all at once thankfully, and we were all warned ahead of time to prepare just in case it got out of hand. A lot of people have little fishing boats for the lake which is an hour or so away but not everyone is so lucky, which includes us. Recently though, about a month before the cake floating incident, the elderly lady next door and her retired husband, Candy and Lance, came by to have a conversation about what we should do, since none of us had gotten a boat in the past. "I've always dreamt of building my own boat, but never got around to it" Lance sighed. "You can't possibly build one, I fell through the lawn chair you built last summer!, the one that took two years to build!" Mocked Candy. "Besides, how will you manage to build it in such short notice?" Candy continued on.

See, we live in a little town with about 50,000 people, sounds like a lot, but it isn't. The towns name is Strawberry Creek and you guessed it, we have a lot of strawberries. About a quarter of our citizens work on strawberry farms, either owning one, farming on an owned one, canning strawberries, freeze dried strawberries and we even have a little strawberry picking farm(where I work)where tourists who've somehow found our "in the middle of nowhere" town can take a bucket home for a few bucks to name a few. Most of these merchants connect with each other and a large group takes wares and goodies to the big city nearby to sell at the farmers market, but enough about that, lets get to what happened on June 29th.

I'm Crissy, and i'm a momma to an adventurous kid named Victoria, living in a little town filled with cows, strawberries, spiders and dirt was probably her ultimate dream in her past life. Every year I try to make her cake from scratch, it hasn't always turned out but I like to think i've gotten better. This year I found a cute and seemingly easy, homemade recipe online which consisted of a two layer devils food cake, filled with strawberry jam and chocolate mousse, then topped with a ton of strawberries and piped to near bursting with more chocolate mousse, it looked divine and I had to just try it.

At 9 am on June 29th we headed to the small grocery store to grab some flour and cocoa as we had most everything else at home, strawberries were naturally growing in our backyard, so I asked Victoria to grab as much as she can carry in a medium sized bowl. Sadly while this was happening, a downpour returned from last night and drenched our little creek beside our back fence and Lance had shouted across the fence that people in the neighboring town a half hour away had to be evacuated. Hoping it wouldn't get any worse out there, I continued on with the cake. After the batter was made, put into a spring form pan and thrown into the oven for half an hour, Victoria helped me to chop up the strawberries, whip up the chocolate mousse and tidy up the kitchen while we waited for the cake to finish baking and then cool a little.

After placing the cake on the rack to cool near the window, we gathered a few of our little favorite things as well as some essential items such as clothes, snacks, blankets for us and our cat Cherry and placed them into plastic containers that we could take along in case the "worst comes to worst" happens. We're a little self sufficient type of town, so we don't have a big fire station or the army close by at hand who could help us out in case something horrible happens so we all try to help each other to be prepared.

"Victoria, would you mind grabbing a jar of jam from Candy's house that she set aside for us?, and give her the ten dollar bill that's on the table for it" I said from across the kitchen, getting the bread knife ready to layer the cake. "kay mom, be right back!", Victoria happily said, then excitedly ran out the door as she loved seeing the new Shiba puppy named "Butter" Candy and Lance have been raising for a couple of months now.

Twenty minutes later and Victoria hops back in yelling "Mom they got a pink strawberry jacket and matching booties for Butter!, oh and here is the jam". I get the cake layers filled with jam, and mousse, add a layer of strawberries then place the top layer of cake on top. Victoria continues on "Oh yeah, and Lance's boat looks kinda useable, if our butts fall through the bottom, will fish bite us?, our butts I meant?". I'm not overly paying attention to what she's describing because after getting more strawberries on top, I hadn't noticed that piping mousse in every crack and crevice of the strawberries would take so much concentration.

"CRACK!" A huge bolt of lightning hit a large tree in the neighbors field behind our house, while watching that and holding the piping bag, what seems to be a squall slammed against our sink window and I ended up squirting Cherry's little forehead with chocolate mousse. Victoria screamed then took Cherry and sat under a blanket on the couch. I quickly filled the rest of the cake, cleaned up the piping bag then washed my hands. I thankfully still had a carrying case for the cake to protect it from little fingers. I bought it last year for a Yoda cake I tried to make that ended up looking like an evil upside down Christmas tree.

Cake protected in the case, I headed to the living room to check on Victoria and Cherry. After seeing they were alright, I slipped on my rubber boots, threw on a jacket and went to check on our lone chicken Macy who was hanging out under the small porch at our back door. While my jacket fought with the wind, I coaxed Macy out, gently placed her into Cherry's pet crate and brought her into the house.

We all sat in the living room dozing off, hearing the wind batter whatever it touched. And then a few hours later we heard several loud bangs. "WE ALL GOTTA GET OUT!, SOME CARS ARE EVEN FLOATING AWAY!" Lance was at the door, his boat, which looked a little more impressive than I thought it would be, was moored to his railing. "Victoria, get your boots and jacket on then put cherry's leash on then wrap her in the blanket, carry her, hold her close and wait while I grab our supplies" I quickly raced to the kitchen where the container was and noticed the cake, when I contemplated whether we should take it, the porch door swung open and water flooded in. "I have to take it, can't live without chocolate cake" I put it on top of the container then ran to the front of the house, "Try to carry Macy in the crate with the other hand, is that okay?, lets hurry" while we watched dishes float from the kitchen to the living room, all four of us ran out the front door and tried our best to get onto Lance's boat alongside Candy and a very excited Butter.

Thankfully we made it and floated down our usually quiet street, though, there wasn't much room for the encased cake, which took more space than I thought a cake would. Seeing my dilemma of whether or not I should have taken this cake with us in a boat with a cute hungry dog eyeing my said prized cake. Victoria spots a floating wagon " look mom!, it even has a rope and we can put stuff in it!, though nothing too heavy", we decide to place the cake and Macy on the wagon and tow the wagon behind us. The water current itself was strangely not too bad, but we were still being battered with rain. Soon enough and about 20 minutes later, we got to a spot where we could try to moor the boat to a stop sign and walk to an emergency shelter set up for the town up the hill.

After sighing with relief, the unexpected just had to have happened!. "The cake!, it's getting away!" Victoria screamed at the top of her lungs as the rope tugging her birthday cake and Macy snapped, the water current gently taking both our pet and the cake back into town where we had just came from, the wagon bumping into the top of a car then breaking open the cake case and the crate Macy was in. Unfortunately because of the height the water had reached, we were not able to swim to them, so sadly had to head to the shelter with no Macy and certainly no cake.

The weekend was spent cold but in good company with the rest of our little town in the shelter. We were really glad to have packed a little container of things and that Lance had managed to get the boat done in time, likely thanks to Candy's nagging for him to get it done faster. Thankfully everyone got out and to the shelter in time. On Tuesday the water had receded enough for us to all catch a ride home on the back of another neighbors truck. And we passed the local flower shop, which seemed to have survived just fine and in front of the flower shop?, was a very plump, happy chicken who spent the weekend warm in her crate while pecking at Victoria's chocolate cake. Thankfully there was a small part left, just enough for us to slice off and place a pink candle on top. We all sang happy birthday after loading up Macy and the remaining slice of chocolate cake onto the back of the truck with a very happy kid. The end