Net::Telnet share question

I am getting the invalid shared scalar error:
Invalid value for shared scalar at
/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/BTI/MVP.pm line 101, <GEN0> line 1

I thought if I did self->{telnet} = &shared({}) this would take care of
it.  Is there something special I need to do with the Net::Telnet->new
filehandle that it creates?  

sub new {
        my $class = shift;
        my $self = &share({});
        $self->{telnet} = &share({});
        if (@_) {
                my $result = TRUE;
                $result = init($self,@_);
                if ($result == FALSE) {
                        $self->{log}->entry("telnet failed",WARN);
                }
        } else {
                $self->{log}->entry("No data to create switch
object",WARN);
        }
        bless $self, ref($class)||$class;
        return $self;
}
sub connect : locked method {
        my $self = shift;
        ##########################################
        # Establish telnet connection
        ##########################################
        $self->{telnet} = Net::Telnet->new($self->{address});
        $self->{telnet}->input_log("/var/telnet.log");
        $self->{telnet}->errmode('return');
        $self->{telnet}->print("\cD\cD");
        my ($pre, $match) = $self->{telnet}->waitfor(
                Match => '/NAME:/',
                Timeout => TIMEOUT
        );
        if (defined $match) {
                return TRUE;
        } else {
                return FALSE;
        }
}