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Two days later, in shorts and a t-shirt rather than his ranger outfit, off Rick went.

"Make sure you go to the right beach," Smokey growled before he left. "Just in case."

Smokey didn't spend any more time on the Internet than Rick, but he went against his habits and looked up Friendly Beaches. He learned the same thing Rick had. Go to the wrong beach, make certain assumptions, and things could go really wrong.

Rick nodded. "I know. I'll follow my phone and make sure the signs read what they are supposed to. Just in case." He didn't plan to get eaten, but still.

It was a long drive. He started at six AM, and his phone said seven hours. That is about how long it took. Three hours just to drive down to the 395 and then out of the Sierras, another two or so through the high desert until he finally broke through into the Los Angeles basin, and almost two more hours up the 405 freeway to his destination.

He only got pulled over once, which was better than he expected. In the high desert near Palmdale a highway patrolman pulled him over. Rick had a pretty good idea why and sat calmly with the window rolled down and his clawed hands on the steering wheel as the CHP walked up. It was worth it for the look of astonishment on the man's face.

"Honestly, sir," the CHP said. "I though you were wearing a mask. I was just making sure it didn't obstruct your vision."

Just the same, the officer accepted his license when he handed it over. He looked down at the name, up at Rick, back at the name, and up at Rick again. "You're Ranger Rick!"

"Yessir," Rick said with a smile. He signed the back of a traffic citation for the officer's son, who read every issue of "his" magazine. He didn't mention that he'd only been Rick for ten years and before that it was all made up. He also left out the frequent fucking and occasional people eating.What he did in his spare time was his business.

Two and a half hours later he was in Long Beach. Almost miraculously, no one did a double take on seeing a raccoon driving down the 405 and swerved off the road. Then again, it was Los Angeles. People probably saw weirder stuff.

He stopped at the vehicle depot, turned in the old Jeep and got the new one, and signed an autograph for the clerk, too. He texted Smokey to update him, drove to his hotel and and checked in. Even the park service didn't expect him to drive fourteen hours in one day.

Rick didn't travel on the government dime much, but he knew the rules. There was some wiggle room as to where he stayed and for how long. His hotel was only two stars but it was also just a mile from a certain pier and while the GSA would only pay for an overnight stay, it didn't stop him from driving to Long Beach on a Friday and paying for the Saturday and Sunday nights himself.

Rick took a quick nap to recover from the drive, which isn't physically exhausting but wears you down mentally. Low tide was at 3 PM and he left the hotel at 2. He left the forest service jeep at the hotel and walked the last mile to the beach.

And there he was at last. Approaching from the shoreward side he found the boardwalk, the lockers he'd read about, and a sign pointing to what he figured was the reformation spot. The symbol of someone popping out of a doorway made him think that, anyway. And next to that, one of the FRIENDLY BEACH RULES AND GUIDELINES signs he'd heard about.

He'd seen pictures of the signs online when he looked the place up the other day. There were slight variations in the signs and he scanned for some of the important ones.

1. YOU CAN BUY DIGESTIBLE CLOTHING ON THE PIER

and especially

1. THIS IS THE ONLY FRIENDLY BEACH WHERE PEOPLE REFORM

...and their notes confirmed it was the right beach.

With that, Rick sat on the wall between shore parking and sand. Right there ahead of him was the extra-wide pier with the shadowy depths beneath it. He spent quite a lot of time the last two nights reading blogs and forum posts about this place. There was an unwritten rule against taking pictures but a lot of people ignored it, so he had a pretty good idea what went on down there. If he went in there he would almost certainly find animals he could fuck, and people too.

If he just yawned, someone would probably stick their head in, and if that happened, there would be no lingering regrets. It would be wholly consensual and the person would spring back to life before he had them half digested. And of course if he wanted to he eaten, any number of hungry maws waited.

He had all the sex he wanted back home, but hardly ever got to eat people. And two of the four people he'd eaten - maybe even three, he sometimes felt a little bad about the lemur guy - had left him with regrets. Smokey didn't agonize over the people he ate, unless you counted the couple of times he got shoes stuck in his intestinal tract, but Smokey started out as a bear. He, Rick, looked like a raccoon but grew up among people. Legally and morally, he was a human being. The fact he had digested four people didn't change that.

Rick's stomach growled. He didn't eat breakfast before he left and that was over eight hours ago. He showed up at the beach very hungry, as was the plan, but now he didn't know what to do.

As he sat there he was aware that people stopped and stared as they went by on the boardwalk. Even here anthros were rare. There were the two semi-ferals and the one full anthro cheetah. No raccoons. People stopped and stared or did a double take and kept going.

Back home, everyone knew about him and Smokey. No one did a double take and a lot of people came there just to meet them. They were rock stars, really, which was one reason he stayed there. Being stared here at brought back bad memories of high school. Did he want to be here at all?

Sooner or later someone was going to stop and talk to him and he'd have to decide. Sure enough, someone did. He just didn't expect it to be who it was.

There was a shuffle of feet through the sand as someone approached from the pier and a peculiar hiss, as though they dragged something behind them in the sand. Lost in thought, Rick didn't react until the person sat on the shore wall next to him and spoke.

"Dude," purred a voice that definitely didn't come out of a human mouth, "Those look like some heavy thoughts."

Rick looked up and there was the otter from the video. He was half humanoid at best, with short ottery legs, long body, webbed hands and feet and a thick ruddery tail long enough to drag when he walked. He had on just a pair of off-white shorts discolored around the waist and leg openings from contact with his brown fur and tight enough to show an impressively long bulge. Rick's sheath made a bulge in tight pants too, but this otter's rivaled Smokey's. Even if he hadn't seen the video, he could see this otter was well endowed and not afraid to advertise it.

Atop the long body was a round furry otter face with a broad, damp nose, whiskers as wide as his shoulders and whiteless brown eyes.

The otter was much taller than he was sitting down and even with his short legs he'd tower head and shoulders over Rick standing up. Smokey was taller and heavier still but the otter was at least three times Rick's size.

"I'm not sure why I came here," Rick said.

"Anthros are super rare, man," the otter purred. "I've never seen a raccoon dude and man, you're a cute little guy. If you want to bang, you're not gonna have to look far. People and animals, you'll have no problem."

Rick shrugged. "I have that back home."

The otter was still thinking about his looks. "Man, I've met a werewolf and a few anthros, but no raccoons. Never even heard of any. Your parents must have kept it on the down low."

"My parents weren't raccoons."

"What, not even one of them?"

"Nope. Both human. No one can explain how it happened."

"Maybe your mom...? No, a human couldn't fuck a raccoon. Too small. Dude, that is so weird. I've never heard of that happening."

"You think that's weird? I work with a bear who turned into a bear-man. Started out a plain old bear, turned into a bear-man. They can't explain that either."

The otter blinked at him. "Dude! I know who you are."

"Shhh." Rick put a clawed finger against his lips. "I'm just a coon dude here, man. I'm on the down low."

"Ohhh." The otter nodded sagely. "We get a lot of that here, dude. So what brings you here?"

Rick sighed. "I watched one of your videos."

"Oh, cool man. Which one?"

"I guess it's the latest. You fucked the cheetah girl into a sea lion's mouth."

"Oh yeah, man. That sea lion is great. Callie loves him, he's just the right size. He's eaten her like ten times just for the show."

The otter leaned back on his webby hands and looked at Rick. "So you saw that and came here. Because you want to fuck, eat, watch, or be eaten?"

Rick looked at the otter. The whiskery water-weasel wasn't as dumb as he sounded.

"I get lots of sex back home. I'm the only raccoon-man most humans ever see."

"Oh yeah." The otter nodded. "I get so many blowjobs 'cause of that, even though there are plenty of feral otters here. And the otters get a lot of blowjobs because of me. They don't complain, man."

"And I don't want to be eaten. I know humans come back, but will I?"

"Callie does," the otter purred. "Animals don't, and I'm closer to one than Callie is so I don't know if I will, so I don't let myself get eaten. You probably would. Probably. Heck, I warned Callie not to do it, but by that time she'd already been in like six stomachs, man." The otter chuckled.

"So I guess I want to eat somebody," Rick said. I've eaten a few back home but they don't come back. Even though they were jerks, I feel kind of bad about that."

"No problem there dude. You could eat someone here, no regrets." The otter looked at him with a measuring eye. "You're a little dude. Callie could swallow you no problem, but you don't want that. You think you could swallow her?"

Rick looked Beachcomber up and down. He knew how big the cheetah girl was compared to the otter, so he could figure out her size. The cheetah was taller than he was, but slender. And he'd gotten better at eating people since the lemur.

"I'm pretty sure I could. But no filming. Down low."

"You got it dude." The otter clapped his webby hands and grinned. "Callie's gonna love this. She's never been inside someone as small as you."

He knew the people here were weird coming in. He'd felt bad for his meal when he gulped down that lemur tail a while back. He decided he wasn't going to feel bad about gulping down the cheetah's. The otter sure didn't have a problem with volunteering his girlfriend as lunch.

Beachcomber led Rick down under the pier and into the maze of rocks and pier pilings he'd heard about. Even here Rick drew stares. A female sea lion no bigger than the otter blinked at him and rolled over, spreading her hind fins in invitation. The otter patted her on the belly and laughed.

"Later, Tiny," he chuckled. A few steps later was either the tide pool from the video or a similar one, with a sort of canal bringing in water. A male dolphin was lying belly up, undulating as it fucked a man. The dolphin, the bearded man, and a second dolphin lying in the canal turned to stare at Rick. The man waved and Rick waved uncertainly back.

"Told you dude," Beachcomber purred. "You wanna get your rocks off, you won't have to look far."

As they went by the dolphin in the canal gaped its beak at Rick and he saw the gullet waiting beyond the rows of peg teeth. The man the first dolphin was fucking laughed and slapped the water. "Hey, me first," he chuckled.

Rick watched wide-eyed as the man rolled to the side in the water. The second dolphin was waiting and the first began enthusiastically humping the man into the waiting maw.

"And yeah, you could get eaten if you change your mind," Beachcomber purred. The man was already halfway gone and a bulge moved down the dolphin's body as he was swallowed. Rick tore his eyes away before the first dolphin got any ideas about a raccoon meal. Deeper in the shadows under the pier waited a slender, spotted cat-woman with a lazily flicking tail.

"So, Ranger Rick," purred the cheetah, looking him up and down.

Rick sighed. "There are other anthro raccoons, you know. Just not many."

"They don't work with a 'bear man', though."

Rick looked at Beachcomber, who shrugged and tapped the flat shape of the cell phone in his pocket.

"Not many anthros around here, man," the otter purred. "People talk. I heard about you before you got to the boardwalk."

Callie sat on a rock and waved Rick to do the same. Most of the rocks were covered with mussels but a few lacked the shellfish and made for decent seating.

"I like your shorts, dude," purred Beachcomber, who only now saw Rick from the back. "I just have a hole for my tail, you have that button flap on top."

"My tail isn't as thick as yours," Rick said. "And its mostly fur. When I just had a hole it was hard to get it through."

Beachcomber nodded. "Honey, this is," he said to the cheetah. He paused and looked at Rick. "Coon dude."

"It's okay," Rick said. There was no one to hear but the three of them. "Yeah, I'm Ranger Rick. I got the job about ten years ago and I work for the forest service with Smokey. I bought one of your videos."

"The last one, where I fucked you down Robby's throat," Beachcomber said helpfully.

"Oh yes," the cheetah purred. "Robby's a dear. Just the right size to fill me up and bendy enough to fuck me into his own mouth. That's a different pay-per-view though." She grinned.

"And you want to eat me," she continued.

Rick nodded. "Smokey eats a lot of people. People who start fires, other troublemakers. He used to be just a bear, you know, but a smart one. He started pretending to be a park ranger to get sex and money, though back then he didn't know what money was. He just knew people wanted it. Somehow this made him turn into a bear-man and the park service hired him. Apparently this is at least the third time it's happened, it's like that Santa Clause thing."

Callie nodded. The story went that a polar bear ate Santa and became him, just as Smokey ate the old park ranger and had to take his place.

"Mmm," Callie purred. "Would I ever like to meet Binky. I hear he visits with ladies during his rounds on Christmas Eve. I'd like to swallow me some North Pole, and get swallowed."

"If you're on the Very Naughty List," Beachcomber purred. "You might only get one trip down his throat."

"So Smokey eats a lot of people," Rick went on. "And I thought, 'I could do that.' But I'm too small to eat most humans. There was this lemur guy, and a few humans. One drug dealer who tried to knife me and a couple of assholes that got me to lose my temper. I felt bad about those two. Pissing someone off shouldn't get you eaten."

He looked at the sand between his feet. "I'm not sure I am cut out for it. Smokey is just a bear, he doesn't think twice about eating people. I want to do it, but I feel guilty about it afterward. But here, I wouldn't have to feel bad about eating someone. It doesn't have to be you if you know someone who-"

"Oh no," Callie purred. She stood up and stretched. "Its going to be me."

She stepped forward, tail swaying back and forth behind her. For a moment she loomed over him where he sat and he looked up at her, knowing she could turn him into a bulge in her middle with little effort. From what he'd read, Callie was a far more experienced predator than he was. If she just leaned down and yawned, wrapped her arms around him, he might not have a choice. Maybe he wouldn't even mind.

But she saw the uncertainly in his eyes and when she leaned down her mouth was closed. Their muzzles almost collided and Rick reflexively leaned back. His jaws parted and Callie pushed her muzzle into his mouth.

Rick snapped his hands around her as it happened, because he'd never had a willing meal before. Instinctively he expected a struggle, so he pulled her close as his tongue bunched up beneath her chin. Then he swallowed, and there was no struggle. Callie's nose slipped into his throat and she leaned forward so he could continue. Her ears flattened as they disappeared under his lips and he looked at the cheetah's waving tail. Soon it would wave from his jaws, until it too was swallowed. He'd hesitated for a moment but that was over. It was going to happen now.

She was taller than his other meals but slender, and with a yawn and creak of he stretched his jaws wider. He could yawn cartoonishly wide. The only people who knew that were Smokey and four people who weren't likely to ever tell anyone due to a bad case of being digested. He rocked his muzzle side to side, walking it over first one spotty shoulder and then the other, and she kept right on leaning forward as her upper arms disappeared. For a moment his narrow lower jaw was pushed in between her boobs in their polka-dot bikini and he was reminded of a titjob. Then a gulp and the bikini was in his throat along with her boobs. Rick reached down to grab her hips.

Rick stood only a hair over five feet tall but he was all wiry muscle under his fur. He could climb as easily as a real raccoon and could lift more than twice his weight over his head. He dug his fingers into Callie's furry rump and hoisted her upward. With a thrust of his muzzle he had her legs pointed at the sky and her weight sent her sliding to the hips into a gaping raccoon maw.

"Dude," purred Beachcomber from his rock, "You rock."

The otter could have stepped over and pulled Callie out, but he no more did that than he had when the sea lion was swallowing her in the video. Out of the corner of his eye Rick saw Beachcomber rubbing the long bulge in his shorts. The bulge was bigger than before.

With an upward heave of his jaws Rick returned his attention to the job at hand. Callie's hips wedged into his jaws for a moment and inside him he felt her head slide into his stomach. There was a strange internal stretching sensation as everything from his ribs to the valve between throat and stomach expanded to let the huge meal past. Rick swallowed and Callie's hips slipped in.

He didn't have a body as long as his meal, like Robby the sea lion. He had to curl people up inside him for digestion and Callie knew it. As her shoulders slipped into his stomach she bent her head down and folded herself double. He only had to touch his swelling middle to get her to do it because she knew a whole lot more about being eaten than he did about eating her. Rick swallowed and there was just a set of spotty cheetah legs and a tail waving from his maw.

He drew in a rasping breath, braced himself against a pier piling and swallowed. His throat muscles were strong, stronger now than when he ate the lemur, and he felt them squeeze the spotty cat down his throat. As her knees slipped into his jaws her tail curled around the back of his head and tickled his ears. It wasn't fluffed out in panic or lashing to and fro. Gently it stroked the back of his neck, like being petted. Inside himself he felt Callie carefully curling up.

Eating someone against their will took strength and violence. All the people he'd digested so far desperately tried to wriggle free even as he swallowed them. They kicked and squirmed right up until he burped up all the air. But not Callie. Rick tilted his head back to help with a gulp and with a forward and up movement of his muzzle the cheetah's padded feet slid in his mouth. His tail was still petting his nape when he closed his muzzle around her toes.

Rick swallowed with all his might and the double bulge of cheetah feet moved through his neckfur. She curled easily up inside him even though she weighed at least as much as he did. She wasn't like the lemur, the would-be drug dealer woman, or the other two humans he ate. They were all either smaller than him or weaker. Callie could have put up a fight right up until his jaws pinned her arms to her sides but she hadn't.

Rick settled back with his T-shirt stretched tight over a massive bulge in his middle. The cheetah was just a bulge that stretched his belly fur tight. Raccoon food.

There was a tickle against his lips on one side. A foot or so of cheetah tail still stuck out. It was only a little longer than her legs but it escaped sliding down with them, probably because it had hooked behind his ear. He liked watching it wave calmly back and forth, not fluffed out in terror even now, but having the thing stretched up his throat was uncomfortable. Just the same, he couldn't bring himself to swallow it just yet. Anywhere else, the tail would be the last time ever see of the cheetah. Anywhere else, he'd feel guilty about the gently waving tail. Here, Rick just leaned back against the rock and belched.

As he gripped his swollen middle to feel the movements inside - he was pretty sure Callie was fingering herself as she suffocated - a wet slurping noise made him look up. Beachcomber had pulled his shorts down, bent his long ottery body double and was sucking himself off.

Rick stared as what must be a foot of otter cock - very nearly as long as Smokey's but not quite as thick - appeared and disappeared. One webby hand cradled the otter's balls and Beachcomber slid his whiskery muzzle down until his chin touched his fingers. The otter let out a long growl, his eyes fixed on the great bulge in Rick's middle. Webby fingers squeezed ottery balls and Beachcomber swallowed audibly. When he lifted his muzzle the wet otter cock shrank back into its sheath.

Uncomfortably aware of his own hard-on, Rick pointed wordlessly at the side of the otter's face. A long pink otter tongue rolled out of the side of Beachcomber's muzzle and pulled one set of whiskers in. When they popped back out the strings of cum that stuck them together were gone.

"Dude, you were great," Beachcomber purred. "Gulped her right down."

The tail hanging from Rick's jaws shivered and he felt the cheetah twitch inside him. Maybe she had fingered herself to climax but he was also sure she was nearly dead from lack of air. He pushed the tailtip into his mouth before it could go limp and felt the tickle of fur as he swallowed it down.

The bulge in his middle was as big as the rest of him put together. He could stand up if he steadied it with his hands, but walking any distance was going to be a problem. It occurred to him that the hotel room, reserved for three whole days to give him a place to digest a hoped-for meal, was of little use if he couldn't get there. He wasn't sure he could walk that far like this, and if he drew stares just by being a raccoon-man he'd draw a lot more by being a raccoon-man with a curled-up cheetah in his gut.

He opened his mouth to admit he'd made a mistake and jumped. While he was distracted Beachcomber had approached and knelt down in front of him.

"Dude," the big otter purred as he slid a hand up Rick's thigh toward his crotch. "Let me get that for you."

"Uh -" it wasn't the first time someone said something like that, but it was never a guy before. It was also never an otter before, always a human. Well, except the one time Smokey's terrifying giant mountain lion girlfriend licked his sheath and furry balls with her raspy feline tongue until he came on her chops. Rick would like Cathy the cougar better if she didn't weigh a ton and a half.

Beachcomber unbuttoned Rick's shorts as the raccoon waffled on how to handle the situation. Between his full belly rubbing against his sheath and watching the otter swallow his own cock Rick unsheathed the second his pants weren't in the way. The same thick otter tongue that gathered in Beachcomber's stray cum rolled over a set of raccoon balls and before Rick could open his mouth to protest his cock was in Beachcomber's.

Rick's cock was halfway between raccoon's and human's in shape. The pencil-thick internal bone had a subtle S or integral sign curve rather than the comma shape of a real raccoon, and so did his dick. It was only half as long as Smokey's or Beachcomber's but it was far thicker than a raccoon's and he'd had few complaints from his human lady friends. Some women had gagged when trying to swallow a cock made rigid by the bone but the whole thing fit easily in Beachcomber's muzzle and the otter set to sucking and licking as his broad tongue came rolling out once more to wash over Rick's furry balls.

Rick thought of himself as completely straight, preferring the scent, look and feel of women over men, but at the moment he couldn't see much more of Beachcomber than ears and a tail sticking out from under the cheetah bulge. He was also so horny he didn't much care who was doing the sucking. Rick reached blindly beneath the bulge of Callie, grabbed ottery ears with both hands and started to thrust.

Awkwardly full of cheetah he almost fell on Beachcomber when he tried to stand and sat back down on the rock. It didn't matter. His hands were still able to pull at the otter's head and Beachcomber knew everything there was to know about sucking dicks. After maybe a minute of treating the otter's mouth much more roughly than he ever would a human woman's Rick growled and came all over the back of Beachcomber's tongue.

"Oh," Rick said, and an ottery face popped up from behind the bulge. Beachcomber swallowed, grinned, and licked his chops.

"Dude, you are just the cutest thing," he purred. His webby hands wrapped around the bulge of cheetah. He knew just where to push and Rick let out a long belch as the remaining air he'd swallowed, plus that from Callie's lungs all came up at once.

Despite coming in his own throat just a few minutes before he could see Beachcomber's swollen pink tip reappearing from a stiffening sheath. The otter seemed to sense he was uncomfortable, though, and pulled up his shorts instead of suggesting anything. Beachcomber sat back on his rock as Rick fumbled beneath the cheetah bulge and blindly buttoned his own shorts.

"Sorry dude," the otter purred. "Got a little carried away. I know not everyone is into guys."

"It's okay," Rick said. His T-shirt was stretched tight over his swollen middle and half of what used to be a cheetah bulged out between shirt and shorts. He tried to pull it over the exposed fur. No luck.

"I knew some weird stuff could happen here," Rick said. "I've never had a willing meal before." He rubbed his swollen belly and a last small burp percolated up. "Never got a blowjob from a guy before, but between watching you suck yourself and rubbing against this bulge, I was, uh, I've got no complaints. That's a great trick, by the way."

"When there's no one around it's the best I have, dude," the otter purred. He waggled a webby hand. "My pads are kind of rough for jacking off because I go on all fours sometimes. I'm long and bendy, so I just suck myself. Guys say I am really good at it."

"You are," Rick didn't say. Instead he nodded. "Smokey says he used to be able to do that, but he can't any more since he got more humanoid. That's a feral thing, or semi-feral I guess."

"That's right, dude," the otter purred. "Jeff can, he's the sea lion guy you saw in the video. So can a lot of ferals around here. But Callie can only barely reach herself and she's really bendy compared to most humans."

Rick felt the bulge of curled-up cheetah under his fur. There was a gurgle as his stomach acids went to work, but no sign of softness yet. Digesting someone your size took a while.

"When will she come back?"

"Almost an hour yet, man," Beachcomber purred.

"So, uh," Rick stroked the shape of Callie's cheek where it bulged out of the fur. "I've got a hotel room, but I guess I didn't think ahead."

Beachcomber threw his head back and laughed. "Dude, that happens all the time here. People don't put their wallet or phone in a locker, or they get eaten with their good clothes on. The stuff washes up on the beach, there's a stand on the pier that sells clothes that have been coughed up or gone all the way through somebody." He grinned. "They sell digestible clothing now. Callie's got an endorsement."

"Well, I can't walk back to the hotel like this."

"Don't worry man. I got you covered." Beachcomber rose on his short ottery legs and padded away through the rocks. Rick followed as best he could, needing both hands around the bulge of Callie to keep his balance. He waddled after Beachcomber, panting. Luckily he didn't need to waddle far. At the shore end of the pier, where the overhead got low enough that Beachcomber had to duck his head, there was a cinder block enclosure. The otter tapped a number on one of the ubiquitous code pads and opened the gate. Within was a golf cart and an assortment of tools.

"Beach patrol cart, dude. They let us borrow it when this happens. You're not the only one who has to waddle home after a meal. The outhouses are out where anyone could see, don't want mundanes to see me or Callie after a meal. We try to keep the weird stuff under the pier, man."

Rick settled heavily into the passenger seat, pleased to see that a mesh sunscreen partially blocked view into the cab. He slouched to minimize the chance someone would see his outline through the screen. Anyone who did see in would recognize Beachcomber and probably assume the smaller shape next to him was his cheetah girlfriend instead of the raccoon digesting her.

The electric cart whirred out of the enclosure and Beachcomber got out and locked the gate behind them. The otter slid back into the seat and drove them across the sand to the parking lot ramp.

"What hotel are you in, dude?"

"Best Western on 10th," Rick said.

Beachcomber shook his head. "I can't take you that far, man. One of the local fuzz has it in for us. He busts us every time we take the cart more than a couple of blocks from the beach. Not the beach patrol, but he busts Callie or me every time. I think he's got some religious thing against us."

Rick nodded. He'd run into that before. Even though both his parents were humans he got called an abomination or a freak from time to time. Luckily the bible-thumpers who had a problem with anthros usually didn't come back to the campground after Smokey read them the riot act. Or ate them, in one case.

"You can crash at our place until you can get back to your hotel without everyone staring," Beachcomber purred. "We got a spare bed for visitors."

Rick wasn't sure how he felt about that. Just how much did he trust the otter and his cheetah girlfriend? Callie absolutely would have eaten him if he'd shown the least interest and he bet Beachcomber ate people too. He didn't want to end up in a belly just so one of them could say they'd finally gotten to eat a raccoon.

"Don't worry dude," the otter said as though reading his mind. "Our apartment is outside the reformation zone. We're trying to get one closer to the beach but no luck so far. We can't eat people where we live. The only reason the city doesn't shut down the pier is that we're all on good behaviour there. Making people disappear for good would fuck things up for everyone."

"We're allowed to eat some people," Rick chittered. "Fire starters, vandals, that sort of thing. I ate this lemur who burned down a cabin full of campers. It was a miracle no one was killed."

"A lemur," Beachcomber mused as he drove. The streets near the beach were narrow and the cars parked on both sides didn't help. "Aren't lemurs tiny, man? How does someone fuck one of those?"

"Or a raccoon," Rick said.

"Yeah. Or your friend the used-to-be-just-a-bear. I dunno, man. Between you guys and the werewolves I don't think we know everything about anthros yet. It's not just all because of the Mer."

They pulled up next to a run-down looking apartment four-plex before Rick could ask what a Mer was. Beachcomber looked around to make sure no one was watching and motioned Rick out of the cart.

It was a second floor apartment and Rick huffed his way up the stairs to the door. He was strong for his size but he didn't get a lot of practice walking around with more than his weight in food in his belly. The good news was he'd been very hungry ten minutes ago. Not any more.

"Let Smokey know where you are, dude. Just so he doesn't worry if he tries you at the hotel and you don't answer."

Beachcomber busied himself unlocking the door as Rick sent the text. The otter was either really good at making potential meals feel safe or just plain honest.

The apartment looked normal enough inside, with a sofa, a kitchen open to the living room and a sliding glass door to a balcony, but it was full of animal musk. Rick could smell Beachcomber and Callie on the furniture and sea lion too, probably the semi-feral lifeguard from the video, plus the scent of a number of humans. He sniffed carefully and picked up no fear. Just the smell of sex. Lots and lots of sex. They weren't going to get their security deposit back. He bet there were stains everywhere.

"Spare bed's here, man," Beachcomber waved at what was probably advertised as a second bedroom but barely accommodated a bed and a small dresser. "Bathroom door is right next to yours. The plumbing is extra wide, man. I don't stop it up after eating people so you won't."

That answered that question, and Beachcomber was right. If a 300-pound otter's dump didn't plug up the drains then a hundred-pound raccoon's poop wouldn't either.

Beachcomber headed for the door. "I gotta go, man. I gotta teach surfing lessons in half an hour. And Callie has volleyball right about when she reforms. You'll be here solo for a few hours. Oh yeah!" The otter snapped his fingers, which didn't work at all well due to the fleshy pads on his digits, and pointed at a business card stuck to the fridge.

"If you wanna go back to your hotel right away, this taxi guy takes people home when they lose their keys or whatever and don't want people to know they were at the pier. Sometimes he drives me or Callie when we're full. He keeps his mouth shut. You know how it is, man. Not everyone thinks people should be fucking dolphins or getting eaten."

Rick thought about it as the door shut. Digesting a whole cheetah heavier than he was took a lot of energy and he felt very much like stretching out on the spare bed and sleeping it off. He could be back in his hotel room in half an hour and do it there, too.

If he went back he'd be stuck there for at least a day. He might not be able to walk easily until Sunday. Eating people your own size has that drawback. And he wanted to talk to these two some more.

The more he thought about it the more tired he got. His swollen middle gurgled as it worked on the cheetah and he found his feet leading him into the little spare room. It smelled like sex in here, too.

Rick was asleep almost before his head hit the pillow. Talking to the otter, and to the cheetah currently on her way to being several raccoon bowel movements would have to wait.