This is a collaboration between me and Fischie. I did the drawing, and Fischie wrote the story.

https://aryion.com/g4/user/Fischie



Gull eats shark
(vore, digestion)

A gull was soaring through the air, moderately low above the shore, his sharp eyes gazing down with unmistakable predatory keenness. The bird had been lucky enough to happen across a careless tourist to steal a hot dog from as an easy breakfast, but by now the unnatural yet not uncommon food had long since been digested by his heated and constantly airborne body. Keeping such a large body as this bird’s in the air for hours on end resulted in an incredible appetite and currently the avian predator was looking to do something about that. His belly was annoyingly empty and regular gurgles reminded him of the fact urging him to amend things before his strength ran out.

Currently the gull was keeping an eye on various little shadows in the waters below betraying the position of a decent abundance of fish. While hungry, he still did not feel like forsaking his hard earned altitude only to dive after some sardines or something. He could try to pick up an easy snack from the humans again since there were a lot of them on the beach this afternoon to enjoy the warm sun. But trying to find something suitable from them meant he had to get really low and even if he got something, there was still the plastic following in the two legers’ wake every time. On several occasions he had thought himself smart and sneaky only to nearly choke on a wrapper or have it clog his guts for days and unless he had something as clearly “held out for him” like his breakfast, he avoided their stuff.

For a while he watched people swimming around, the small silhouettes of tiny fish getting no more interesting or a boat passing by until he noticed another dark spot appearing in the water. From then on, the gull did not waste much time as he noticed the new larger shadow stalking the smaller ones. It was a predatory fish of some sort, no doubt. His current altitude did not allow him to precisely guess its size, but it seemed small enough for him to snatch up and eat. And even if not, he was confident he could drag it to shore and put his beak to making it small enough.

The gull circled around the group of fish, only ever taking his sharp eyes off his potential meal to scan for any competitors having the same idea. This was his fish now, whether he saw it first or not. Going at a high speed he cork-screwed down to lower altitude to better stalk and prey upon this blissfully unaware creature. The closer he came, the more he noticed that he was probably in for a rare treat. The sand brown colour of the would-be predator, its darker spots and rounded snout and fins combined with an incredibly sleek and thin silhouette meant he was going after a little cat shark. An adult of its kind would be utterly impervious to his attacks due to thick sand paper like skin and sheer weight. But this one was still young, edibly young, as far as the hungry avian was concerned.

After one last sweeping circle, the gull went for a straight on approach, coming in from the shark’s rear to avoid being spotted. He planned to throw it around and align its snout with his needy gullet at a later time, but before he could do anything of the sort he had to get it out of the water.

With some good speed behind his swooping attack, the bird opened his beak and went right for the middle of the shark which looked like it was basking in the sun, or presenting itself to someone needing to fill a belly.
With a sudden splash of water, the gull landed in the sea, a sharp impact on his head telling the predatory bird that he had hit his mark. Clamping down his beak, he felt it being stopped pleasantly early by the by the girth of his prey. Should he be able to devour this baby shark he would not have to eat for quite a while. Compared to his usual meals it was a real strain on his neck to pull the now wiggling and squirming shark out of the water.

The entire bird himself was shaking a little, needing to use his wings repeatedly to prevent his unhappy catch from capsizing him. But once his neck was leaned back over his body a little, he could start the time and energy consuming process of aligning his meal with his needy gullet.
Multiple times he lowered and lifted his head carefully, opening his beak at just the right time to toss his struggling meal into the air a tiny bit and catching it a few centimetres closer to its head. Bit by bit the gull worked his way forwards, resisting the struggles of his meal and ignoring the sore strain in his muscles knowing this would be worth all the trouble in the end. Once the avian beak had marched its way past the pesky but thankfully flexible pectoral fins of the shark and arrived at the firm, tapered head, the bird knew the crucial moment had arrived. He dipped his head down, until the long body of the shark splashed around in the water even. Then, in one last show of force he threw it up into the air, flipping it around so it would fall down head first into his now waiting beak.
Thanks to his vast experience eating all sorts of aquatic prey, the gull managed to account for the effect of the continued struggles and with one wet squelch, the little shark ended up down the bird’s hungry gullet all the way down to his pectoral fins. Once the beak clamped down on the soft cartillageous fish again, its hooked tip poked around near the shark’s pelvic fins already. With great satisfaction the successful predator rested for a second, letting the struggles of his prey work to further drive it down his slippery, drooling gullet, pressing his tongue up against the writhing body of this rare meal. As more and more shark made its way unwillingly down the hot avian gullet a quite prominent protrusion started forming in the gull’s neck, squirming and ruffling the predator’s feathers as it grew and descended.
Now all he had to do was greedily gulp down and finish off his doomed prey. Latching the horned edge of his tongue into the teeth-like scales of his prey, the gull lowered his head again to pull in more of his meal before lifting it right back up, head pointing into the sky. His flexible throat stretched pleasantly over the rough, hard skin of the shark, a protective layer which provided no use when being devoured whole and alive. From here on, his prey slid down with surprising speed as he gulped. The bird closed his eyes in predatory bliss as he felt his neck stretching as more shark entered his body, soon arriving at his crop. The well trained first station of his digestive tract opened up, after some slight resistance, to the challenging meal, allowing the bird to throw his head back again and devour the last of the shark’s tail. One last water splashing flopping kick to the side provoked one final gulp and then the beak shut again.

With his head now levelled and his lower neck still stretched tautly around the horrified shark, the gull noticed that he had attracted an audience. On the nearby coast was a large bubble of humans holding up their weird square plastic things which sometimes flashed at him. With as much of a smug expression as any bird could muster, he lifted his head up again and swallowed hard, sending his prey further down. After all, the shark could not satisfy his hunger by massaging his crop.

Since his meal had reflexively rolled its body up into a tight circle, one which had fit into his crop really neatly, the gull found it very straining to swallow the shark down further. It took a few attempts, a lot of lubricating drool and iron determination to force the painful stretch upon in insides which was necessary to force the unlucky creature into the next chamber of the hot avian digestive tract. This was the place where concentrated acids far warmer than the surrounding water would drool over the prey in copious amounts. The exceptionally well fed gull felt how his prey kicked even more as the burning sensations of these secretions touching its sensitive eyes and gills broke the stupor it had fell into after being swallowed whole.

With the thick swelling in his neck gone, thanks to the now empty crop, the gull shook his head and ruffled his feathers comfortably, and yawned, showing the stunned spectators an obviously empty maw as he simply floated there on the water, feeling his insides calming down as his prey slowly succumbed to the strain, heat and digestive juices. In a bit the shark would be passed further down into the gull’s gizzard where rough walls and strong churning muscles would grind it down into the nutritious paste the bird always wanted it to be. But already the only sign of the cartillageous fish’s entire existence was a subtle swell in the feathery predator’s belly just below the water line.

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