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"Go feed Rudy," the zoo docent says. "Be careful around his tongue."

You nod and smile. It's your first week on the job at the zoo. This is the first time you've gotten an assignment past cleaning up poop and sweeping cages. You figured the best you could hope for this soon was helping with enrichment exercises. Things like giving the polar bear a fish frozen in a block of ice, or hiding bits of meat in the big cat cages. Anything out of the ordinary to keep their minds occupied.

Instead you get to feed an animal! You thank Bob and go. He's been really distracted lately. One of the rhinos is sick and the jaguars are feuding.

You pick up the food bucket by the door. It is full of some sort of food pellet, little ones like you give to housecats. Do anteaters chew or just swallow their tiny food whole? Maybe you'll hear it crunching up the pellets and find out.

It's only a hundred yards to the giant anteater enclosure and you let yourself in with your limited access key. It only opens a few of the enclosure doors, not the tiger pen for example.

Technically you aren't supposed to go into an enclosure alone but giant anteaters are slow moving, harmless things as long as you keep out of reach of their claws. You read that they actually killed a couple of people in South America a while back, but that was dumbass hunters who tried to save ammo by going after them with a knife.

"Hey Rudy." A long tube of a muzzle turns to face you and Rudy's huge brush tail turns away. Giant anteaters are ridiculous looking things. Long snout, thick gorilla forelegs with strong curved claws they use to dig into termite mounds,  hump-backed body, big brush tail. Add in the stripes on their sides and they look like an animal designed by committee.

You chuckle as you enter the pen. There's a warning placard by the door that shows an anteater snout with its long tongue slicking out. Jeez, they put warning stickers on everything here.

Rudy hears the pellets rattle in the bucket and turns, blinking near-sightedly in your direction. You scatter some pellets on the ground in front of him and he waddles forward. A long pink lick of tongue slides out of his wet mouth and gathers them up. His sticky tongue is an efficient tool for gathering small food items.

No crunching noises. He's either swallowing them or you can't hear him chewing. You try to remember the Nature special you saw a while back that had anteaters in it. Nope. All you remember is that they dig into termite mounds and eat everything they can lick up.

Rudy's cup-shaped ears swivel as you flick a few more pellets. He finds them where they land and slurps them up, too. Rudy is hungry. He's as big as you are, it'll take a few pellets to satisfy him.

You glance around. No one else is in sight and you gather up some pellets in your cupped hands. Feeding animals by hand is prohibited unless you're certified and you aren't yet but what harm can it do?

It turns out it can do quite a lot. Rudy's wet black nose twitches as you extend your hands. Out comes the long sticky tongue, thick as your finger. It sweeps over the pellets, picking up a couple, then wraps tightly around your wrists and pulls your hands into Rudy's mouth.

"Hey!" the strength of his tongue surprised you, and what happens next does as well. Rudy steps backward and the sudden pull sends you toppling forward. You land on your belly with a grunt and before you can extricate your hands from Rudy's tube mouth he steps forward again.

You assumed his long curved snout was rigid. You never expected to see a bulge moving along it, much less one that just happens to be shaped like your  forearms. Slimy maw slithers over your hands as they slide deeper, pulled by the anteater's muscular tongue. There is a wet slurp as your arms disappear to the elbows. The pull of the tongue and some sort of peristaltic suction effect are too strong to fight in your awkward position.

"Cut it out, Rudy. I'll get in trouble if anyone sees -"

Nope. You're already in trouble. You work that out when two things happen. The first is when Rudy's tongue slithers out once more and wraps around your upper arms. The second is when his powerful forelegs reach out. His claws grip your shoulders and pull you in even as his maw slithers past your elbows. A great contraction ripples over your lower arms, sucking your hands deeper, and that wetly elastic maw is sliding up your arms toward your face. Rudy is actually trying to eat you!

You try to squirm free but your arms are pinned and Rudy's forelegs are just too strong. The struggle costs you previous seconds you should have used to call for help. About the time you realize that, Rudy's wet mouth is expanding over your face.

This is ridiculous. Anteater's don't eat people and even if they did, you're as big as he is! Rudy is giving it the old college try. Though. Rippling muscles inside his snout pull his elastic maw over your entire head, producing a bulge as though he'd sucked up a watermelon, and then he swallows.

The suction is incredible. You're pulled arms first into Rudy's tube maw. Your chest drags along the ground as his forelegs keep you pinned. You already knew his claws are dangerous. They are long and sharp and he's more than strong enough to dig them into you if he chose.

His claws aren't the problem right now. They are just guiding you into his maw. No, your main problem is that Rudy has his wet mouth over you past your shoulders and it looks an awful lot like he can - and will - swallow you whole if you don't wriggle free.

Rudy sets about doing just that.  His claws scrabble, get a grip, and pull you powerfully forward. The sharp edges leave long scratches on your hips but you are more focused on the fact that your hands just pushed through valve into the anteater's stomach. It is a muscular, gizzard-like sac and it expands only enough to make room for your hands. Then your arms, and then your face as Rudy swallows with all his might.

A kicking set of legs is all that's left outside and you feel his claws hook over your buttcheeks, ready to shove another portion of you into his rubbery maw. There's simply nothing you can do to stop him. His forelegs are too strong and more than half is you is wrapped in his swollen tube mouth and body.

His stomach consists of powerfully muscular folds which roll over you, squeezing and crushing. It thinks you're an ant, or a whole bunch of ants. Grit caught in the fleshy folds scrapes your skin but you have larger concerns. One is that there isn't much air in here and all and the other is the thick layer of caustic slime coating the walls. The kneading action of his stomach forces it into every crevice of your body and your clothes soak through almost instantly.

Rudy stretches out his tube mouth and sucks, slurping your legs up like kicking noodles. When his rubbery lips reach your knees you finally think to hook your heel back and whack him in the skull. Or at least you try. His tube mouth is so long you only hit the massive bulge slowly making its way toward his throat. Your kick hurts your thigh more than it does him.

There is a last slurp and your feet are part of that bulge now. You squirm and struggle, but the thick gizzard walls are too slippery to grip. Folds of gritty stomach slither past your face as Rudy tenses, lifts his long muzzle and swallows one more time. His tube mouth shrinks back to its usual diameter, helping push your squirming body down his throat.

You slip and slide as the last of you slithers into his gut and it's all over. Even before you start your final struggle you know it's useless. Stretched as his gizzard is, the tough muscular walls still squeeze you into a helpless fetal ball. You're just a grotesque bulge in his middle, a lump of food as big as the rest of him put together.

You hear Rudy gag and cough after the gulp and take some small satisfaction in the anteater's discomfort. As his gut squeezes you tight and you feel the stomach juices start to work you realize why he gagged. One of your shoes is still on your foot but your other is naked, lacking even a sock. The undulations of his throat muscles pulled your shoe off and he coughs it back up.

Your one surviving shoe protects your left foot. The rest of you isn't as lucky. His gizzard kneads slime into every pore of your body and soon the inward flowing acid displaces the few sips of air he swallowed with his meal. From deep inside the unlikely predator you hear Rudy let out a long, high-pitched belch.

Little pebbly somethings are trapped between you and the gizzard wall. It takes you a moment to realize they are the few food pellets he ate before starting in on his larger meal. That answers the question of whether he chewed them up. They are whole and are softening in the acid bath, much like you. You'll just take a bit longer to digest.

Too swollen to walk, Rudy rolls over on his side and flips his tail over his eyes. His pulse slows and soon the steady thump of his pulse and the gurgle of slow digestion are all you can hear. You put all your strength into a kick, trying to knee him into barfing you up. It barely moves the thick wall of his gut. It's simply impossible to get any leverage rolled up in a ball and wrapped in slippery gizzard walls. Rudy dozes, settling down to digest his breakfast. All the hard work is done. It's up to his gut now to do the rest.

The dark presses in. As acid sears your skin you know it won't be long now. There's maybe one breath of rancid air left in the folds of your clothing and that will be it.

Wait!  You slide your hand along your belt. Tight though it is in here the slime coating everything makes it easy to do that much. If you can stab him from the inside with your keys -

No luck. The keys are gone and so is the palm-sized radio all zoo staffers carry. You don't feel a hard rectangular something anywhere in his belly so the radio, and presumably the keys, must have been swept off your belt as you were swallowed.  They are probably out there next to the one shoe he didn't gulp down. That's super helpful. Even if the radio gets keyed somehow, like Rudy rolling over on it, all they will hear is an anteater snoring. Maybe a burp or two.

Eaten by an anteater. What a ridiculous way to die. That warning sign on the enclosure door was there for a reason after all. Maybe you aren't the first to get too close to Rudy and get a trip through the bowels of an anteater.

It does beg a question. Though his stomach acids are working quite well on your skin, unfortunately, your clothes and one shoe seem immune to the effect. How will they get out of here?

Maybe he'll cough them up after digesting you, along with any bones that survive the acid bath. Maybe that one bulky shoe will make its way laboriously (and hopefully very uncomfortably) through his intestines and end up in a pile of anteater shit. Maybe the zoo vet will have to go in with an endoscope and pull the thing out from one end or the other. He's got that endoscope for a reason. Animals end up swallowing all sorts of weird things. Today the weird thing is you.

They'll know what happened to you long before your clothing reappears. Bob's going to recover from his worries and twig to the fact that sending a newbie to feed Rudy might result in exactly that. Or someone will happen by the cage and there will be the anteater, grotesquely full and next to your missing shoe. Swallowing a man as big as himself results in a furry bulge that can't be anything else. You can feel the shape of you standing out of his fur and it's going to be a while before the bulge softens. They'll know.

There will be much arguing and a lot of paperwork to fill out, but it won't change a thing. You know zoo policy from your safety briefing the first day.  Unless there is a chance to save whatever fool ventured into an enclosure, no action will be taken against the animal involved. Rudy got his meal and he'll get to keep it.

There will be no casket with mourners.  Or at least not a casket with a body in it.  When Rudy is done with you there simply won't be a body to bury. The best your family might get is an urn full of ash made from burnt anteater poop.  It's the only memento they are likely to get. Oh yeah, and maybe your bones. It's too soon to tell if those will survive and you won't be around to see the final result.

One last try. You put all your diminishing strength into an effort to uncurl, bracing your hands against your knees. Make him throw you up -

No. The thick, tough, rubbery gizzard squeezes you back into a tightly curled ball. Then it goes right back to rolling over you, kneading acid into your every pore. The food pellets have dissolved. Your skin isn't far behind. Rudy's stomach has a single job, and it's very good at it.

Your struggle doesn't even wake the anteater from his digestive torpor. There's just nothing left to do.  You relax in the gurgling, rough-walled gizzard and wait for the end.

"Feed Rudy," Bob said.  Mission accomplished.