A man walked into a pet store and looked around. The store owner was busy with another customer. As the man checked out all the cages, he didn’t see anything that interested him.

Passing the door to the back room he saw a cage with a guinea pig and a squirrel. He entered the room and approached the cage.

The guinea pig looked up and said, “Hello.”

The man stopped in his tracks and quickly looked around the room. He was the only human in the room. The guinea pig looked at the man and said, “Hello” again.

About this time the owner of the pet shop came in.

“You shouldn’t be in here sir!” said the owner.

The man said, “Yes I know, but I just heard that guinea pig say hello to me.”

The owner said, “I’m sorry he did that.”

The man said, “I think it’s marvelous. Is the guinea pig for sale?”

“Oh, no,” said the owner. “I could never sell him.”

The man said, “You could be rich and famous if the world knew about him.”

They went back and forth as the man started naming a price in the millions.

“Stop,” said the owner, putting his hand up. “I can’t sell you the guinea pig at any price. If I did I would be a fraud. That guinea pig can’t talk. The squirrel is a ventriloquist.”

— Submitted by

Larry Telles

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Send your groaners to Maureen Dolan, mdolan@cdapress.com.

Keep ’em clean, and don’t be mean.