Problems w/ USB ports on Happy Hacking keyboard

So I finally got one of those Happy Hacking Lite 2 keyboards for my little mac... I'm quite pleased with it, too, but I have one rather strange problem with the built-in USB ports: My mouse, a "Creative Notebook Optical", just won't work when connected via one of them. I thought at first this meant the ports simply weren't supported by OS X, but then I found that:

1. The unit is correctly identified as a USB HUB (as well as a keyboard) in System Profiler.
2. Other devices, like the iMic audio system, work quite all right when connected this way.
3. If I connect another USB HUB to the keyboard, then connect the mouse to that, the mouse actually works!

So what exactly is going on here? Is there a config setting or anything that I can change to get the mouse to work when connected directly to this keyboard's built-in HUB?