[reds1]

Ladies and gentlemen, here is tonight’s Top Ten List (or, my salute to David Letterman):

“So, Paul, get this, there’s a baseball team down in some island country, call ‘Braeland’ I believe – “

“Braeland, is that near California?”

“Well I think it’s a little further than that. But there’s a baseball team that has the duck-billed platypus as their mascot.”

“A duck-billed platypus?”

“A duck-billed platypus. Just rolls of the tongue, doesn’t it? So the writers here got to wondering, as they so often do on pressing issues such as these, on what would uh, what would possess a professional sports team to, uh, adopt such a creature as a mascot.”

“It’s an unusual choice.”

“Exactly. Exactly. You wouldn`t think it would conjure up fear in the hearts of opponents, but then again, I`m just your friendly neighborhood talk show host, so what do I know?”

"So for tonight’s Top Ten list, we’ve come up with the Top 10 Reasons Why the Duck-billed Platypus is the Mascot of the Wellington Athletics. Here we go:

10 – New Zealand already had first dibs on the kiwi.

9 – A deal with Pittsburgh for their penguin and a puffin to be named later fell through.

8 – Wanted the most goofy-looking creature known to man, but Donald Trump’s hairpiece was asking for too much money.

7 – Platypuses eat rally monkeys for breakfast.

6 – He was able to save us 15% or more in car insurance in 12 minutes – beat that Geico!

5 – At least it’s not as dumb as having an elephant for a mascot, am I right people?

4 – No number 4 – writer too busy trying to figure out what a platypus is.

3 – Wanted the second-most goofy-looking creature known to man, but Lady Gaga wouldn’t return our phone calls.

2 – They have a duck-bill, beaver tail, webbed feet, venom, shoot lasers and come with a 10-year power train warranty – what’s not to like?

And the number one reason:

1 – Because it was about freaking time!