Barry the Snail

Barry the snail was houseproud. He was one of the few upwardly mobile creatures in the garden, owning his own home. People sneered at him, called him trailer trash, but he didn't care. They had to scurry to their holes or hide under the nearest leaf for shelter, but not him, he carried his house with him. One night as he slept some jealous ants stole his home and carried it off to their queen. When Barry woke up, he was terrified. He had never felt so exposed before, he didn't know what had happened to his house and he wanted to get it back. Fortunately nobody knew who he was without his house, so he went undercover as a slug and visited the local bar. There he overheard the ants laughing at their successful heist. When they went out the back to the toilet Barry followed them and oozed over them, trapping them in slime. With no prospect of escape, they told him where they had taken the house. Just before he flushed them down the toilet they told him he'd never defeat the ant army, he had lost his house for good.

Barry wasn't worried though, because he knew the local mystic cricket. The cricket lost himself in a trance of strange vibrations and worked a kind of magic upon Barry. He was transformed into that rarest of garden creatures, the midget slimy anteater. In this guise he advanced upon Ant Hill, the castle of his enemy. Being small enough to get inside, and with a protruding snout that sucked down the warrior ants and then spat their heads out like bullets on the advancing hordes, he mowed down the entire army as they unwittingly provided him with all the ammunition he required.

When he had decimated the ants he broke into the royal chamber to discover the queen asleep in his home. Clearing his throat gently he woke her up. When he saw her face he fell in love, and the two of them moved into his house together and raised a small clutch of anteater ants. The strange cannibal nature of their children meant none of them ever survived very long, but they didn't care because they hadn't really wanted children anyhow.

And so they lived together for many years, the snail who became a slug who became a midget slimy anteater and his queen. Her mysterious snack-related death was never solved.