"Bronze Sculpture" joke

A tourist wanders into a back-alley San Francisco antique shop and sees a detailed, life-sized bronze sculpture of a rat. Finding the sculpture so interesting and unique, he picks it up and asks the shop owner the price.
"Ten dollars for the rat, sir, "says the shop owner, "and a thousand dollars more for the story behind it."
"Keep the story, old man," he says, "but I will 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 each 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, all 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 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 the San Francisco Bay with the other as far as he can throw 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.
Mumbling and quite shaken, he makes his way back to the antique shop.
"Ah, sir, I see you've come back for the story," says the owner.
"No," he says, "I was just wondering if you happen to have a bronze lawyer."