A recent medical case in Australia is almost too outrageous to believe and has garnered the attention of the International Journal of Surgery Case Reports. Doctors in Canberra were shocked after coming across a patient with a four-inch fork lodged in his penis.

According to the paper “An Unusual Urethral Foreign Body,” the 70-year-old man, who has refused to be identified due to obvious reasons, intentionally stuck the eating utensil up his urethra in order to gain “sexual gratification.”

Autoerotic stimulation or autoeroticism is the act of creating sexual excitement by oneself. Although this is primarily achieved through masturbation, other methods have been crafted to stimulate a sexual response — this case being one of the more bizarre.

After considering several options for dealing with the outlandish predicament, doctors successfully removed the fork using forceps and “copious lubrication.” Doctors were not able to see the fork protruding; however, they were able to feel it and X-rays clearly showed a fork in the man’s lower urinary tract, The Canberra Times reported.

No formal history of psychiatric disorders was discovered with the man, but he was previously affected by Morganella urinary tract infection, for which he declined radical treatment. “It is apparent that the human mind is uninhibited let alone creative,” authors of the case study wrote.

A list of “self-inserted foreign bodies” provided by the study's research team included:

“Needles, pencils, ball point pens, pen lids, garden wire, copper wire, speaker wire, safety pins, Allen keys), wire-like objects (telephone cables, rubber tubes, feeding tubes, straws, string), toothbrushes, household batteries, light bulbs, marbles, cotton tip swabs, plastic cups, thermomethers, plants and vegetables (carrot, cucumber, beans, hay, bamboo sticks, grass leaves), parts of animals (leeches, squirrel tail, snakes, bones), toys, pieces of latex gloves, blue tack, Intrauterine Contraceptive Devices (IUCD), tampons, pessaries, powders (cocaine), fluids (glue, hot wax).”

Source: Naidu K, Mulcahy M, Chung A. An Unusual Urethral Foreign Body. The International Journal of Surgery. 2013.