"I pushed a cardboard tube up his rectum and slipped Harry, our gerbil, in," he explained. "As usual, Tony shouted out, 'Armageddon,' my cue that he'd had enough. I tried to retrieve Harry 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 spokeman described what happened next. "The match ignighted a pocket of intestinal gas and flame shot out of the tube, igniting Mr. Grayson's hair and severly burning his face. It also set fire to the gerbil's fur and whiskers, which in turn ignighted a larger pocket of gas farther up the intestine, propelling the rodent out like a cannonball," Grayson suffered second-degree burns and a broken nose from the impact of the gerbil, while Maloney suffered first- and second-degree burns to his anus and lower intestinal tract.
Harry did not survive.