[379] in Humor
HUMOR: Rats!
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Wed Jul 27 15:50:27 1994
From: abennett@MIT.EDU
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 27 Jul 94 15:40:36 EDT
Date: Fri, 1 Jul 94 12:41:07 PDT
From: Connie_Kleinjans@Novell.COM (Connie Kleinjans)
From MANY sources...
Subject: Rats!
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."
