Shaggy dog stories play upon the audience's preconceptions of
the art of joke telling. The audience listens to the story with
certain expectations, which are either simply not met or met in
some entirely unexpected manner. One such story is "The
Encounter with the Horrible Monster," a shaggy dog story that is
told as if it were a horror story. The story is a tale of a
horrible monster (or an escaped lunatic, or an escaped prisoner,
or a gorilla), that pursues a character implacably. After a
lengthy exposition describing the pursuit, during which the
audience's expectations of a horrendous climax are built up, the
monster eventually corners his victim, at which point he touches
him saying "Tag! You're it! Shaggy dog story has come to also
mean a joke where a pun is finally achieved after a long (and
ideally tedious) exposition. This is also called a feghoot. The
humor in the punch line may be due to the sudden, unexpected
recognition of a familiar saying, since the story has nothing to
do with the usual contex