PLATTSBURGH — The magic is in the nose, says Laura Green, also known as Pipsqueak the Clown.

Green first put on the nose 20 years ago this year and has been “clowning around,” ever since.

Pipsqueak arrived at the Press-Republican office in full clown fashion, ready with props and puns, including a miniature plush hotdog on the end of a leash.

“I brought my dog, ‘Frank,’ I can’t leave him in the car in the summer or he’ll turn into a ‘hot dog.’ I took him to a special dog race and told him to ‘ketchup,’ he ‘mustard’ heard me, because he won, they declared him the ‘weiner,’ we really ‘relish’ in that victory,” Pipsqueak said.

Before Pipsqueak, Green was a teacher, one year teaching second grade, then kindergarten at a private school in Indiana before homeschooling four of her five children; she used puppets to make her lessons more memorable.

This is what she credits as the start of her clowning career, as at a puppet convention in Rochester, Green met a clown offering puppeteering lessons who inspired her to try it herself.

She bought makeup, a clown outfit and Pipsqueak was created.

“I did a party for a friend, and then some parents hired me for their kids’ birthday, and at first I thought ‘oh a paying gig,’ it will pay for my magic habit,” Green said. “When I put the nose on for the first time I never dreamed it would become what it is,”

With 20 years of putting on shows and telling jokes as Pipsqueak, there are simply too many stories for Green to share.

“My mind flooded with twenty years of special moments. But what I really love most is that I get to be part of other people’s favorite childhood memories,” she said.