"In
retrospect, lighting the match was my big mistake. But I was only trying to retrieve the
Gerbil," Eric Tomaszewski told bemused doctors in the Severe Burns Unit of Salt Lake
City Hospital. Tomaszewski and his homosexual partner Andrew (Kiki) Farnom, had been
admitted for emergency treatment after a felching session had gone seriously wrong.
"I pushed a cardboard
tube up his rectum and slipped Raggot, our gerbil, in." he explained. "As usual,
Kiki shouted out 'Armageddon,' my cue that he'd had enough. I tried to retrieve Raggot but
he wouldn't come out again, so I peered into the tube and struck a match, thinking that
the light might attract him."
At a hushed press
conference, a hospital spokesman described what happened next. "The match ignited a
pocket of intestinal gas and a flame shot out of the tubing, igniting Mr. Tomaszewski's
hair and severely burning his face. It also set fire to the gerbil's fur and whiskers
which in turn ignited a larger pocket of gas further up the intestine, propelling the
rodent out like a cannonball."
Tomaszewski suffered second-degree burns
and a broken nose from the impact of the gerbil, while Farnom suffered first and second
degree burns to his anus and lower intestinal tract. | 
