Smorgas-weird

"The dog ate my homework." Teachers haven't believed that excuse since the nineteenth century, but it does happen. Dogs eat all sorts of crazy things, according to this series of X-rays, including rubber duckies, arrows, and engagement rings; a friend of mine's chocolate Lab ate the friend's wallet whole.

Rats can eat homework, too. It happened to me in college; I turned my back on a ten-page Wordsworth paper for five minutes, and the next thing I knew, Templeton had turned it into a comfy nest. (Obviously he'd read it first. Everyone's a critic.)

Ferrets will snack on electrical cords, recliner stuffing, and Taco Bell; rabbits will eat everything from entire hoodies to cars parked at the airport; and cats, who act like they're above that sort of thing, will not confine themselves to licking plastic shopping bags and harassing you for a bite of lemon yogurt, oh no. At least, mine won't; Hobey ate a chunk of a vintage table once, leading to a three-thousand-dollar surgery, and Little Joe thinks he loves jalapeños, and never remembers scraping his tongue on the carpet to get rid of the taste the last 138 times he tried them.

It's never funny at the time – and if your pet regularly eats kooky stuff like cat litter, feces, pen caps, or any other inorganic items, please take her to the vet pronto to make sure she isn't ill. But if you can't laugh when your pet chooses a tasting menu of, and I quote, "pseudoephedrine/sponge/snail poison/tampon," you'll cry. (Or ask a lot of questions, like: what the frilly heck is snail poison anyway, and why are you storing it near your feminine-hygiene products?)

Has YOUR dog chowed the phone bill? Did your rabbit eat the hat instead of getting pulled out of it? Can your hamsters short out the whole neighborhood? Tell us about it in the comments – what's the strangest, most hilarious thing your pet ever ate?