This one made me chuckle. Sent by one of the many nice people I have been
priveleged to know in the flying tribe,George Rutan. (Burt's Dad.)
> A tourist wanders into a back-alley antique shop in San Francisco's
Chinatown.
> Picking through the objects on display he discovers a detailed bronze
> sculpture of a rat. The sculpture is so interesting and unique that he
picks
> it up and asks the shop owner the price. "Twelve dollars for the rat,
sir,"
> says the shop owner, "and an
> extra thousand for the story behind it." "At that price, you can keep
the
> story, old man," he replies, "but I'll take the bronze rat."
>
> The transaction complete, the tourist leaves the store with the bronze
rat
> under his arm. As he crosses the street in front of the store, two live
rats
> emerge from a sewer drain and fall into step behind him. Nervously
looking over his shoulder, he begins to walk faster, but every time he
passes
another sewer, more rats come out and follow him. By the time he's
walked two
blocks, at least a hundred rats are at his heels, and people begin to
point and
shout. He walks even faster, and soon breaks into a trot as multitudes of
rats
swarm from sewers, basements, vacant lots, and abandoned cars...
following him. Rats by the thousands are at his heels, and as he sees the
waterfront at
the bottom of the hill he panics and starts to run full tilt. No
matter how
fast he runs, the rats keep up, squealing hideously now not just
thousands
but millions, so that by the time he comes racing to the water's edge a
trail
of rats twelve blocks long is behind him. Making a mighty leap, he
jumps up
onto a lamp post, grasping it with one arm, while he hurls the bronze
rat
into San Francisco Bay as far as he can throw it.
Pulling his legs up and clinging to the post, he watches in amazement as
the
seething tide of rats surges over the breakwater into the sea, where they
drown. Shaken and mumbling, he makes his way back to the antique shop.
"Ah sir, you've come back for the story," says the owner. "No," says
the
tourist, "I was just hoping you had a bronze sculpture of a lawyer "
Graham
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