The two butchers were brought into the emergency room.
They both had their left hands bandaged.  "What happened?"  I 
asked the first one.  "I was cutting some meat when the cleaver 
slipped and cut my hand."  I asked the other one how he had
been injured.  "Oh, I was showing the other guys what *this*
guy was doing and I did the same thing."

"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 admittedfor
emergency treatment after a fetching 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 'Armagedon," 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 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. 

Several women appeared in court, each accusing the other of the trouble 
they were having in the apartment building where they lived.
The judge, with Solomon-like wisdom decreed, "I'll hear the oldest first."

The case was closed for lack of evidence.