How are things at home? I’m having a pretty interesting trip. I’m learning a lot about a cow’s digestive system by traveling through it. In the mouth, we were chewed up into smaller pieces in preparation for digestion in the stomach. Then, we were swallowed and pushed down to the stomach by muscles in the walls of the esophagus. A cow has four different sections in its stomach. We were churned, mixed with all kinds of stuff, and then pushed back up into the mouth to be rechewed. After being swallowed again, we were pushed into another section where we were dried out. Then we moved on to the last part of the stomach. In this area, lots of juices came out of the walls. There was a lot of strong hydrochloric acid and a substance called pepsinogen. The HCl converted it to a mean enzyme named pepsin. It started breaking the bond between me and the other amino acids. When we left the stomach, I was part of a intermediate protein. Next, we went to the small intestine, where another enzyme called trypsin was secreted by the pancreas. It finished breaking us up until we were all single amino acids. I was then absorbed through the walls into a capillary. Now I’m traveling through the bloodstream. They tell me that the other amino acids and I are going to be rearranged into cow proteins. Well, hope to see you soon.

Love,

Captain Carbon