[Zope] Still Plagued With Date Formatting Bug in Text Field

I asked this question about 10 days or so ago but I haven't gotten (or at least seen) an answer. I have looked for the answer in Zope docs until my eyes bleed and I just can't figure this out. I have a text field called start_date. I set its default value to today's date by setting its value to (_DateTime().strftime("%b. %d, %Y")) The date shows up in the field, but only the first item of the formatted string displays. In this example, the field contains "Apr." and that's it. Now if I set the default value of a textarea to the same exact value, the date displays correctly. Anybody have *any* idea what in the world is going on here?