I looked in a Russian dictionary and found cyrillic characters "xopek"
corresponding roughly to the sound "horyawk" (first letter is x, like the
modern Greek "ch" sound for letter chi, the ch in German "loch", 'k' with
air escaping the mouth; the 'p' is like Greek rho, (slight flip of the
tongue 'r'), and the e has two dots meaning a sound which sounds to me like
a cross between "yoo", "yu", and "yaw").  I used this word with a Russian
man I met at the park who spoke no English and he seemed to know the word
and repeated it several times to his son while petting Seldon.
 
In Indonesian looks like the closest is "sebangsa berang-berang"
(see-BONG-sa b'RONG-b'RONG, with flip on the r), which means literally "a
kind of otter".
 
Spanish "huron" (oo-RONE), Italian "furetto", Dutch "Frett", German
"Frettchen" (again with German "ch" sound as above), .  .  .
 
But what is it in Ferret?  "VupVupVupVupVupVupVup" or "Chhhhhhhhhhh"!? :)
 
Todd Cromwell III, Dors (hunter of bottles) and Seldon (Mr Shavo-stomach)
 
P.S. For our friends in Israel: Ani ohev et hachaya sheli.
[Posted in FML issue 2027]