Peter and Brian in Tampering With Nature

Major Crum and his Snail

As Wallace tried to work out how to speed up the growth of his new flowers to meet his deadline tonight, he felt something slip out of his trouser pocket. He picked up it and saw it was the flyer of Rye Armstrong's Quick Grow Muscle Formula. Then the specific words 'Quick Grow' made him think and became interested in reading the whole flyer. Then he reread the 'Magical Ingredients', which were 'Grotein', 'Enegrides' and 'Strongium'. Then that gave him an idea. If he could find those magical ingredients and make the quick grow formula and then put it on his flower seeds, maybe that would speed up their growth.

"Genius!" Wallace boasted. "This is better than my brilliant idea of presenting my Christmas Cardomatic to Father Christmas."

One Christmas, Wallace and Gromit went to the North Pole to see Father Christmas, his reindeers and his elves and show them their Christmas Cardomatic that they built themselves to help spread even more Christmas spirit around the world. They even gave them a demonstration. Gromit dressed up in his robin costume and posed for Wallace to take the photos. Then Wallace turned the machine on to make the Christmas cards. When the finished cards came out, they were all a complete mess. The photos that Wallace took off Gromit on the cards were very blurry and the writing on them were very messy.

"Well, Father Christmas, what did you think?" Wallace asked.

Father Christmas looked at these Christmas cards and then he looked at Wallace and Gromit. "I think that these cards are just so..."

Wallace looked hopeful.

"Goddamn awful!" Father Christmas snapped.

That wasn't the reaction Wallace was expecting at all.

"These cards are so terrible that they're not worth giving to naughty children!" Father Christmas went on. "You said your invention was going to spread the spirit of Christmas! It's done nothing but suck the spirit of Christmas!"

Wallace and Gromit didn't know what to say.

Soon, Wallace left 62 West Wallaby Street and made his way to get the special ingredients in town when –

"Wallace, over here!"

Wallace looked ahead to see one of his neighbours, Major Crum, sitting on a wooden bench.

"Yes, I'm talking to you, Wallace!" Crum yelled. "Get your fat ass over here!"

Wallace approached him. "What is it, Major Crum?"

"I've got a feeling," Crum said.

"And what is this feeling you have?" Wallace asked. "Joy? Sadness? Fear? Disgust? Anger? Anxiety? Envy? Ennui? Embarrassment? Nostalgia?"

"Enough with the emotion characters from Inside Out please, Wallace," Crum said. "I feel that something wicked is about to happen. Something that's going to come from the skies and attack this street, like the Wicked Witch of the West's flying monkeys or those nasty evil aliens in Independence Day as good examples."

"Or should you say evil examples?" Wallace asked.

"Oh, good one, Wallace," Crum said.

"So what can we do about this invasion?" Wallace asked.

"Look at this."

Wallace looked at what Crum put onto the park bench next to him. "A snail?" It was a snail. "Oh, I get it. Looking at snails is going to save the world."