If you've heard this before, all I can say is, "sorry".


A tourist wanders into a back-alley antique shop in San
Francisco's Chinatown. Picking through the objects on
display he discovers a detailed, life-sized bronze
sculpture of a rat. The sculpture is so interesting and
unique that he picks it up and asks the shop owner what it
costs.

"Twelve dollars for the rat, sir," says the shop owner,
"and a thousand dollars more for the story behind it."

"You can keep the story, old man," he replies, "but I'll
take the 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 drain,
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. 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 rushing up to the water's edge a trail of rats
twelve city blocks long is behind him.

Making a mighty leap, he jumps up onto a light post,
grasping it with one arm while he hurls the bronze rat
into San Francisco Bay with the other, as far as he can
heave it. Pulling his legs up and clinging to the light
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, so you've come back for the rest of the story,"
says the owner.

"No," says the tourist, "I was wondering if you have a
bronze lawyer."

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