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A tourist walks into a curio shop in San Francisco. Looking at the exotica, he notices a very lifelike, bronze statue of a rat. It has no price tag, but the statue is so striking that he decides he must have it. "How much for the bronze rat?" he asks the clerk.
"Twelve dollars for the rat and a hundred dollars for its story," responds the clerk. The tourist hands over twelve dollars. "I'll just take the rat. You can keep the story."
He leaves the curio shop carrying his bronze rat. Within a block, he notices that a few real rats have crawled out of the sewers and have begun to follow him. He walks faster, but within another block, the number of rats following him has swelled into the hundreds.
Unnerved, the tourist trots toward the Golden Gate Bridge. He looks behind him and sees that the rats now number in the millions. They are squealing loudly and coming toward him faster and faster.
The tourist runs to the middle of the bridge and throws the bronze rat as far as he can into San Francisco Bay. The millions of rats turn away from the man, jump into the bay after the bronze rat, and are drowned. The man walks back across the bridge and returns to the curio shop.
"Ahh!" says the clerk. "I'll bet you've come back for the story."
"Not so," says the man. "I've come to see if you have a bronze statue of a Republican."
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