Actual article from the LA Times, The editor's comments at the end are hilarious:

"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" 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," our signal 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, to try to see him. I thought the light might attract him and he'd come forward to where I could get him out.

At a hushed press conference a hospital spokesman described what happened next. "The match ignited a pocket of intestinal gas and aflame 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 Farnum suffered first and second degree burns to his anus and lower intestinal tract.”

Editor's Notes: Things in this story that scare me...

"I pushed a cardboard tube up his rectum ...."

"So I peered into the tube ... " (I'm sorry, but that's like looking through a telescope into hell. I'd rather use binoculars to stare at the sun.)

That poor gerbil (who obviously suffers from low self esteem) being shot out of the guy's anus like Rocky the Flying Squirrel on the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon.

Suffering a broken nose from a gerbil's body being launched out of someone's ass. I'm just guessing, but I seriously doubt that said gerbil was springtime fresh after his journey into Kiki's tunnel of love."

People walking around with these volcanic-like pockets of gas in their intestines.

People who do this kind of thing and then admit what they were doing when taken to a hospital emergency room. Sorry, but I think I would have made up a story
about a gang of roving, pyromaniacal, anal sex fiends breaking into my house and sodomizing me with charcoal lighter fluid before admitting this kind of truth.

Call me old fashioned if you must, but I just cannot imagine looking at a doctor and saying, "Well, doc, it's like this. You see, we had this gerbil named Raggot, and we took a cardboard tube ... "

"First and second degree burns to the anus ...."
Wouldn't this make the burning itch and discomfort of hemorrhoids seem like a welcome relief? How does one ever take a healthy dump after something like this?
And the smell of burning anus must be in the top five most horrible smells on the face of God's green earth.

People named "Kiki" which is obviously a Polynesian word for: "Idiotic man who insert rodent up his butt."

What kind of hospital would hold a press conference on
this?

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Here's to a new year that's free of incidents like those in your lives! :D