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A few years ago, there was a really eccentric oil tycoon who had taken it into his head to collect really strange and exotic pets. One day, deciding to add to his collection, he walked into the store of an exotic pet shop and said to the salesman , "Show me the most unusual pet you have in stock!"The salesman took him to an outside tank, in which a pod of dolphins were frolicking happily. "These may LOOK like ordinary dolphins," he told the man, "but these were given to us to sell by a genetics research group studying ways to genetically reduce aging in humans. It seems the experiment was a success on these little guys.They can't survive out in the wild anymore, they're too tame, but as long as they don't catch any severe debilitating diseases, they will live more or less forever." The man is impressed, and being the wealthy man that he is, drops the cash to buy the dolphins and have a suitable home for them installed in his backyard.The man became quite attached to his pets and took very good care of them, and they frolicked about in their tank happily for nearly fifteen years, much longer than any of his other pets had ever survived.The man spared no expense for their care, and seriously considered leaving his multi-million dollar estate to them in his will. But one day they began to seem a little droopy and not very energetic. Alarmed, the man rang for the vet, who told him that alas, his precious dolphins had contracted a rare icthyoid disease, and the only antibiotic for them had to be derived from the feathers of the blue Savannah parrot that lived on the jungle fringes of Africa.The man didn't think twice. He called up his travel agent and booked the next day's flight to Africa, and rented a jeep and a guide and pack boy to help him bag some of these parrots. They drove up to the edge of the jungle, stopped the jeep and trudged into the trees on an old native hunting trail, nets in hand. After about six hours of this, they had bagged two of the parrots, and the man decided that would be enough feather to make enough antibiotic for his pets. So he trudges back out toward the jeep - and freezes. A huge, stately lion had decided to take a nap right in the middle of the path between him and the jeep. He looks over his shoulder and realizes that his companions have fled leaving him literally holding the bag, and the grow th is too thick on either side of the trail to make it past without waking the lion. So he backs up about fifty feet, gets a running start, and leaps over the beast and makes a dash for the jeep and drives off for the airport.Just as he is nearing sight of the airport, he hears a siren and sees some flashing lights. He dutifully pulls over, and a policeman steps up to him and says, "I'm sorry, sir, but you're under arrest - "The man interrupts him, "Oh, please, officer, I'll pay any fine at all! I need to get these parrots back so I can make a vaccine for my dolphins so they don't die!""Well, sir," the policeman replies, "I'm afraid that's the root of the problem. I have to arrest you for taking mynahs over the stately lion for immortal porpoises."
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