Broadcast: November 9, 2003
Duke's Story

Duke the Mouse in:
IT'S MY PARTY

     Duke is my pet mouse. In case you’ve never heard anything about him, he lives with me and he’s my pet and, you know, there’s not much else to say about that mouse.
     Oh, don’t get my wrong. I ask him lots of questions but he doesn’t want to bothered. Honestly. Like his birthday. Duke won’t say anything about it. He won’t tell me what day he was born. He won’t even say how old he is. Isn’t that mouse something? I mean, what’s the big deal?
     Duke said the big deal was none of my dealing. He said he’s a very private mouse and all this birthday stuff is unnecessary.
     Fine. So I just picked a day for his birthday because, hey, everybody has to have a birthday at least once a year. It must be your birthday sometime during the year.
     Duke was not amused. He was not amused nor interested but that didn’t stop me. I mean, I barely need an excuse for a party anyway and Duke’s birthday seemed like the perfect excuse.
     So I told my pet mouse to prepare to rock the house. It’s party time. He was stunned. He was so stunned he took a nap. Now, if you don’t know, that’s what Duke usually does when he gets overexcited. Heck, he does that when he’s under excited, too. Unfortunately he decided to take a nap in something I was making. Oh, it was for his birthday, all right. But it wasn’t exactly a present. I made it with papier-m�ch� and then painted it brightly and I was just getting around to hanging it as the guests came.
     Well, one thing lead to another and I forgot about my pet mouse until we started whacking the pi�ata. This is a birthday tradition from Mexico. You hang a colorful papier-m�ch� creation and party goers take turns trying to hit it with a bat until it breaks apart and candy spills out. Only this time, my pet mouse came out, too. He was napping in there, remember? Ooo, Duke sure remembers. He was clinging for dear life to a piece of bubble gum when he hit the floor.
     But Duke was a good sport about it all. It was for his birthday I told him. After all it was all for his honor. And how much more special can you get, what with the presents and the pi�ata? Well, I’m not sure. Duke crawled off and took a nap in his birthday cake.
     And that’s the way it is with Duke.