Learning to pun

Lucas has a pretty dumb book called Morris the Moose. Morris meets a cow and tells the cow it must be a moose because it has four legs and a tail and horns on its head. The cow argues, telling Morris that he says "moo" but Morris says he can say "moo" too. Nothing the cow says can convince Morris he's a cow so they go find another animal to resolve the dispute. They find a deer, but that just makes things worse because now the deer decides they're both deer. And so they keep looking for other less-narcissistic animals to clarify what kind of animal everybody is. (I admit I do like the part where they all come across a horse, who immediately says "Hello you horses! What are those funny things on your heads!")

Finally they all stop to take a drink in a stream and each of them can see his own reflection in the water. Having gotten a good look at himself even Morris realizes that the cow etc. don't really look like him. So the cow says triumphantly, "see, you made a mistake". And here's where the story really takes a nosedive. Morris says, "no I didn't. I made a MOOSE-stake!"

Lucas likes the book and has been asking for it a lot so as a coping mechanism I decided to really play this final awful pun up with him. I went over and over it with him in tedious, pedantic detail.

D: See Lucas -- the word is supposed to be MIS -STAKE, but Morris says MOOSE - STAKE!!!! Haha! Do you get it?

L: Yeah.

D: It's really funny, huh!?

L: Yeah, funny! [nodding and smiling more than chortling....]

Anyhow last night Mama read Morris to Luke. When they got to the last page, the one with the pun, Mama asked Luke to tell her what it said. He smiled and said:

L: Stake-Moose!