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]