"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 the Salt Lake City Hospital.

Tomaszewski, and his homosexual partner Andrew "Kiki" Farnum, 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,

At a hushed press conference, a hospital spokesman described what happened next. "The match ignited a pocket of intestinal gas and a flame shot up the tube, 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 broken nose from the impact of the gerbil, while Farnum suffered first and second degree burns to his rectum and lower intestinal tract.