Over lunch recently, Jeff mentioned the joke behind the title of Lynne Trusse’s book Eats, Shoots and Leaves, which goes a little something like this:

A panda bear walks into a bar and orders lunch. He sits quietly munching his food, and after he finishes he wipes his mouth with his napkin, pulls out a gun, fires into the ceiling and walks out.

“What was that all about?” the bartender asks the waiter.

“Oh, that’s what a panda bear does. Eats, shoots and leaves.”

(Obviously, this joke really only works when it’s spoken: “eats, shoots and leaves” sounds just like “eats shoots and leaves.”)

Later in the week, as we were talking about this joke and others of the [fill-in-the-blank]-walks-into-a-bar genre, I said that it seems to me that people don’t really tell jokes so much anymore. I proposed a contest, or party game, in which people challenged each other with the front end of a joke, requiring the other participant to complete the joke. Whoever could do so in the shortest amount of time would win.

Jeff proposed, “A panda bear, a fox, and a gorilla walk into a bar.”

I proposed, “A three-legged sled dog walks into a bar.”

So, can you finish these jokes?