"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 awry.

"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. 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 tube, igniting Mr. Tomaszewski's hair and severely burning his face. It also set fire to the gerbil's fur and whiskers. This fire in turn ignited a larger pocket of gas further up the intestine, propelling the rodent out like a cannonball."

Tomaszewski suffered 2nd degree burns and a broken nose from the impact of the gerbil. Farnum suffered 1st and 2nd degree burns to his anus and lower intestinal tract.