Chapter 6: The Gizzard

"What's a gizzard?" Peter asked.
Agnes didn't answer. "Hey, where am I?"he snapped. After much poking and prodding, the hawk awoke.
"Damn you Peter, can't you let me sleep?"
"I most certainly can't sleep in here!"
"What did you want? Make it quick so I can get some sleep, or else I'll be really tired and might forget not to burp or something like that."
"Ok, could you tell me what a gizzard is?"
"Second stomach. Does most of the processing of the food."
"Processing! Wait, does that mean it'll kill me?"
"No, there should be some water coming to you by morning, but I really need my rest." the hawk said, before going back to sleep.

Peter Rabbit was worried now. While Agnes said that it shouldn't kill him, he feared that the gizzard might cause him all sorts of unpleasantness throughout the night. And he was right. Merely half an hour after Agnes had gone back to sleep, acid began to pour into the gizzard. He had been asleep, being exhausted, and had started to dream that a fire-breathing dragon was attacking him. He wondered why it actually felt like it was burning. He soon awoke to realize that acid was coming in. This soon began to burn off more fur. Also, the gizzard contracted and squeezed against him, trying hard than the proventriculus had to process him. Now his skin, going bald in many places, plus his anus and balls, were itching worse than ever. Bare patches of his skin, devoid of fur, began to blister. When he peed two hours later, his penis got hit with a trickle of acid, causing him to quickly put it back in his pants and just finish urinating there. The pants were already so soaked by water and milk that a bit of urine couldn't really damage it any further.

The acid content was such that his hands became blistered from rubbing the gizzard wall. He was most miserable that night and was glad when Agnes finally awoke around sunrise. "Get me some water! It burns like the fires of hell in here!" he moaned.
"Sorry, my bowl is empty of water."
"Pee and then drink it or something! It's really hot and burning in here!"
"I'm afraid my pee isn't quite like that of your kind. It's not really liquid like that."
Peter wondered what she meant. However, he knew enough to know that it wouldn't help him. Half hour later, Agnes drank water, then, crying out for more, downed an entire second bowl that the McGreggors gave her. This however, didn't reach Peter for several hours, as it first went into her proventriculus.
The young rabbit, meanwhile, felt that he had to poop, for he normally had a bowel movement once a day. Thus, he pulled down his pants and underwear and voided his feces. This helped relieve his rectum, though the acid landed on his exposed rear, burning fur off of it and blistering it. This made the itch there worse than ever. And speaking of itch, since he had nothing to wipe with, that also made his anus itch all the more.
He had no relief until about noon, when finally the water from above came down to him. This came with the annoyance, though, of having the hawk's breakfast also land atop him, leaving him in a mixture of food and water up to his middle. This he helped process by dancing.
He spent the next few hours in silence, rubbing the stomach walls and wincing in pain as the rest of his fur burnt off. Thankfully he skin was, for the most part, protected from blistering, but his face was turning raw as it was unprotected. He shielded it with his hands, only for those to get blistered instead. At dark, around 8PM, Agnes was released for the night. She felt a disturbance in her gizzard, one she'd had many times before. Peter, however, was new to this, and so was alarmed when a large chunk of fur, bones of her prey, and even Peter's shedded fur, was heaved upward into the proventriculus and further up until she upchucked the pellet out of her mouth. Half the air in the gizzard was gone, though it left enough for Peter to breathe, though barely. "What the hell just happened?" the rabbit asked. "Pellet. How I don't have to poop out all the annoying stuff." "Pity I couldn't come with it." he sighed. He stayed in her gizzard as she flew around, moving from tree to tree. He could feel her move but, being inside her gizzard, had no idea of where she was. It wasn't until Agnes went to bed that night around 10PM, for Peter kept her awake with his whining, that something finally happened. The gizzard began to drain, taking the contents, including Peter, of the stomach with it downward into the duodenum. It was a tight and painful squeeze, but, bit by bit, he was moved into the small intestine. Finally, he was out of the range of stomach acid and ready for the next stage of his journey through the bird's digestive tract.