The wife purchased a King Cake yesterday. It’s kind of like a Mardi Gras cinnamon roll on steroids, dipped in frosting and drenched in the gloriously garish Mardi Gras colors of green, purple and gold. This one had a bunch of beads stuck on it, as well as a couple of cute little Mardi Gras coins. And of course, all King Cakes have The Baby in them.

I wish I’d thought to take a picture before we tore it to pieces! Luckily, the angle above almost makes it look like savages hadn’t been first raised by wolves, then starved for weeks, and finally made to fight for the cake on national TV. It almost looks like that didn’t happen. Almost.

Forgive us. We had coffee, and it’s really good with coffee. It’s surprising we didn’t eat the beads. See below.

Naturally, when you have kids, everyone is enjoying the cake enough, but in reality they are mostly all worked up about The Baby.

The kids: Who will find The Baby? Where is The Baby? How will The Baby manifest Itself? Can we keep The Baby?

The parents: Will they choke on The Baby and die? Is The Baby covered in lead paint? Am I being terrifically negligent? And just how fattening is this cake?

And before we knew it, we had somehow obliterated 79% of the King Cake, and I was suspecting a fraud. There WAS no The Baby. We’d been duped!

Stella: Dad, I want another piece!

Me: Sure, honey. (gets cake)

Stella: Ok, now eat it and find The Baby.

Finally, when all seemed lost, we located The Baby. I think it was just sitting under that pile of beads and frosting, and the removal of a hunk of cake knocked The Baby free. It was anticlimactic, at first- a surprisingly tiny, gleaming figure sitting on the plate in a wreckage of massive chunks of frosting shrapnel. I peered at it in disbelief, and then reeled back in shock as I stared at the abomination before me. Behold- The Baby!

A few things spring to mind immediately.

1. The Baby is a partial amputee. And has been since birth- the paint job has ‘healed over’ – so I could rest easy knowing there probably wasn’t a stray baby arm in the cake. I am a good father.

2. The Baby is metallic green. Is it some kind of robot? The liquid metal robots from Terminator 3 sprung to mind. Did it come from the future to choke my babies before they free us all from The Matrix 34 years in the future? GO KIDS GO! Curse you time traveling Baby Terminator!

3. Detail and proportions are weirdly disturbing. He has some kind of weird legpants and shoefeet. His head is too large. The tiny green metal butt cheeks are perfect. They are TOO perfect, too symmetrical and detail free. Too perfect to be of this world. This fits with the ‘from the future’ theory.

4. Look at the cold wisdom in The Baby’s eyes. His oversized head is strangely serene. The Baby has lived for thousands of years, and has never shed a single tear. Yet, it smiles a vacant, empty smile while it mindlessly extends its broken arms in the mindless zombie shell of a Christlike embrace. It sends chills down the spine.

So yeah… long story, short, we found The Baby. And I then spent 10 minutes trying to get a good picture of The Baby’s butt. And I thought it was a really good idea. Did I mention I have no life?

And then, because my daughter has OCD and is obsessed with tupperware, the small, green Baby got filed in a small, green place: a small, green plastic shot glass.