Hi.  Decided to come out of lurking again momentarily to offer a candidate
for "nerdiest ferret name," although I admit that the Delta/Epsilon thing
is hard to beat. ;)  My (currently) solo silver mitt fuzzbutt is named
"Rorty," after Richard Rorty, an American pragmatist ("post-analytic")
philosopher who taught at Chicago, Princeton, UVA, and currently inhabits
the comparative lit department at Stanford.  He also happens to be my
formative philosophical influence, and the major focus of my studies at the
moment.  Ferret Rorty, like Philosopher Rorty, is opinionated, exceedingly
difficult to pin down, and a lot of fun to have around even though he often
produces a lot of crap.  The only problem I have with the name is that when
one of my professors or advisors starts talking to me about "Rorty," my
initial inclination is to assume they're talking about Ferret Rorty.
"How's the Rorty coming along?" "He's doing all right.  Just finished
playing with him for a couple of hours, I assume he's sleeping like a
baby." Leads to some odd looks.
 
On a side note, Rorty will soon be getting a sibling, most likely one of
four female shelter ferrets (single ferrets... I'm not separating a bonded
group, don't worry) who will be in need of a suitably philosophical name...
this is a bit of a sticky wicket, as there aren't that many female
philosophers with whose work I identify currently working in the American
academy.  Don't blame me, blame the academy.  I'm sure whatever I come up
with will be suitably nerdy, though, and I'll keep you posted.  =)
 
Finally, some of you might remember me posting about a possible ferret
neglect case that I wanted to rescue and rehab.  Well, after further
rooting around, I found out that things weren't as bad as they had been
described to me.  It turns out that the ferret in question is *not* kept in
a tiny cage in a garage... its cage is in the garage, but the ferret has
the run of the garage, and its sleeping materials, food, water, etc., are
kept in the open cage.  The ferret gets human attention, as well -- not the
hours per day I'd recommend, but it's not what I envisioned, i.e. the
ferret in the gerbil cage with Meow Mix and poop.  The situation is still
far from ideal by my standards (or by FML standards, I'm sure), but it
isn't quite the situation I had thought it was (in other words, a "GET THAT
FERRET RIGHT NOW OR NEVER SLEEP AGAIN" situation).  I'd like to sincerely
thank everyone who posted to me personally... you were without exception
kind and concerned, and I'm sorry I couldn't reply to everyone personally;
my e-mailer has been very irritable lately.  Anyway, thanks again and
everyone take care of yourself and yours.
 
Otter Driver (and Ferret Rorty)
[Posted in FML issue 2646]