A man walks into an antique store, and starts looking around. All of the sudden he spies a huge BRASS RAT in the corner. He falls in love with it, and so he takes it to the cashier.

"The rat, eh?" says the old grizzly cashier

"Um, yeah ... how much?" replies our friend

"Well, five bucks for the rat--but 200 dollars for the story," he replied.

"I'll just take the rat, without the story." Says the customer.

He leaves the store, his precious brass rat tucked under his arm. Soon he begins to notice that a few rats are following him. He walks a few more blocks and the number of rats behind him increased. This continued, until there were virtually millions of rats behind him.

Afraid of this mass following the man ran to the sea and threw the rat in. All of the rats plunged in after it, and met their watery deaths.

The man ran back to the antique store. The old cashier was chuckling to himself. "So now do you want the story?"

"No," said the man, "but have you got any brass lawyers?"