Jake was sitting atop an abandoned lighthouse, his shark eyes gazing over the nearby fields. His morning flight over the shore had turned up nothing interesting enough to eat and so it was the land’s turn to provide the great black backed gull with sustenance. The tall grass nearby was home to many a tasty rodent, occasionally small snakes hunting mice fell prey to him as well and if that did not happen the nearby woods were usually ripe with smaller birds this time of the year.
Apparently other gulls were having similar thoughts since there were several of them sitting on the crumbled roof of an old house or on the cliffs close to the sea. The lighthouse however was his, at least the very top and Jake was large enough to not have to enforce his unwillingness to share his perch with other hungry gulls.
As the sun rose higher the grassy plain was getting more and more alive. First insects and small field mice started to stir and many a bird of various breeds started diving for either, trying to fill their crops. Jake however did not want to get into a fight over a mere mouse, he would rather pick on some of the birds going after grasshoppers, but luckily for his tasty distant cousins, something else prominently entered his gaze.
Exiting one of the many holes in the ground, a rabbit entered the scene. The fluffy little mammal was way too girthy for most birds to even consider going after it. A bird of prey might try to snack it up and pluck it apart on its perch, but none were around at the shoreline. Jake however watched the mammal hop about, looking for food itself. It showed the confidence of something in no danger of predation, unlike the younger ones which were probably hiding from the chattering birds in their burrow. They knew they were easy prey. This rabbit did not, and Jake was going to teach it otherwise.
He unfurled his wings, fluttered his tail feathers and then hopped off his lofty perch, catching the wind as he dropped down, soon gliding effortlessly over the field. Doomed as it already was, the rabbit still did not bother to run. Whether it was oblivious Jake or simply underestimated the capacity of his gullet, he did not know nor did he care. Since there was not too much effort required to hide his intentions, the large gull simply circled around his meal to be once, allowing himself to descend in the rabbit’s back. Spreading the feathers on tail and wings as he dropped, Jake dove down directly at the rabbit, making quite a bit of noise in the air, or so he thought. Between the screeching and chirping of a hundred birds in the area, the crashing waves nearby and the wind stirring the tall grass, the prey seemed oblivious still. In fact the first notice the rabbit took of Jake, was when the large avian landed, straddling its fluffy form and bouncing into its back. Snow white feathers impacted on grey brown fur and the mammal looked up in shock, only to see an incredibly widely gaping beak rushing towards its head, engulfing its vision in moist warm darkness.
 Jake was determined to ensure that the next time the rabbit touched his belly, it was going to be from the inside. He closed his beak firmly around his now struggling prey, meeting dusty fur with the salivating insides of his maw. The gull was excited for this, finding the rabbit to be bigger than he first thought, enjoying a good challenge when it came to turning careless creatures into temporary swellings in his insatiable gut. Lifting the rabbit was extremely hard however. The wild kicks of the desperate snack were not the issue here, but it weighing nearly half as much as Jake very much was. Another way of looking at it was that this thing could keep the black hole that was the gull’s stomach busy for at least two entire days, something Jake had not managed to pull off with a single prey item since he ate that young shark a year back. Determined to show this rabbit where it belonged, he jabbed downwards, using his swiftness and the prey’s inertia to bolt it up his gullet instead of down. Repeating this over and over in quick succession allowed Jake to swallow the rabbit up to its shoulders. His throat and beak were stretched so wide it nearly hurt, but the thickest, most unyielding part of his prey was down and now he had much better leverage to finally lift his head.
The mammal continued to struggle wildly, seemingly unphased by the sudden shift of direction or the fact that the air it breathed was coming from Jake’s empty crop. Its dull claws glanced off his tough feathers and now that gravity was on his side, Jake actually felt the rabbit’s struggle carrying it down towards his stomach on its own, almost as if the animal knew its proper place. But that was not fast enough. Jake was racing against the clock, needing to utterly devour the rabbit whole and alive before he ran out of breath. His magnificent wings spread again and each time he fluttered them, his neck stretched upwards, his beak japped and widened around a little more prey than before. After each exerting lunge, he seemed to shrink back together some, pulling his catch down with his beak’s firm grip, forcing the bunny face first past his crop. He realised that he might still have it stuck in his very throat by the time the mammal’s face bottomed out in the acidic pouch that was his stomach. Undisturbed by that realisation the bird continued to feed. All he saw was a shaky image of clouds, the sky, very jealous gulls and the kicking legs of his catch slowly descending below his field of view.
His crop was merely an extension of his throat by now, guiding his living meal downwards. Eventually the rabbit’s hips slid in, spreading his gullet as widely as its shoulders, spreading feathers away from his throat to dangle in the wind. He could do it! Finally his ability to breathe returned, slowly. It was painfully hard to draw breath, as if something was choking him. But to Jake’s great delight, and also pride, the suffocating feeling lessened as the weight of warm struggling meat in his stomach grew. With renewed vigour the gull started to nod down, forcing the paws to descend faster before bending his neck, pushing on his freshly consumed prey almost like a snake would. Only that he was too greedy to bother killing the rabbit first. Replacing its air supply with avian stomach juices would do the trick soon enough.
 
Once the rabbit was entirely seated in his stomach, and crop, and its paws extending all the way up to his throat, Jake was struggling to keep his footing. His meal was heavy! Flying was not even an option by now and walking only then if the goal was a soft spot close by to sit down and rest. Simply containing this much prey at once was hard already, let alone digesting it. His usually insatiable stomach had its work cut out for it as he finally settled down, basking in the remaining warmth provided by the gurgling rabbit and the envious stares of other gulls.