Actually from the LA Times:
"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", 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 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 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 a broken nose from the
impact of the gerbil, while Farnum suffered first and second degree
burns to his anus and lower intestinal tract.