In the course of our conversation about chickens yesterday, I discovered that my doctor had once been the owner of a beloved rooster named Shaft. Myself, I own a rooster named Long John Silver, though he does have both of his legs and, to tell the truth, Paul gave him that name when he thought the rooster was a hen. Paul, however, is a famously adventurous namer. For instance, once, when he was toddler, he named every chicken in the flock Butter, except for one, which he called Butterscotch, and another, which he said was Money.

At age 6, James wanted to name a goat Dumptruck, but I did veto that idea, pointing out that she didn't look at all like heavy equipment. He agreed, and so he changed his mind and named her Lulu, after his friend Lucy. The goat doesn't look like Lucy either, but oh well. In the past I've had goats named Tess (of the d'Urbervilles), Julian (of Norwich), Dora (after David Copperfield's dopey wife), Celia (from a poem by Ben Jonson), Ruth (from the Bible), Esther (after a great-aunt who was good at poker), and Eleanor of Aquitaine (in honor of my friend Jilline, because we shared an affection for loudmouthed medieval queens). Undoubtedly, Dumptruck would have been a good name for a pig, but we'd already named our pigs Miss Tanque and Shufflenose.

After watching Spinal Tap, the boys collaborated on naming the parakeet Nigel Tufnel. Though our Nigel, like his namesake, is not much of a musician, our previous parakeet was a remarkable jazz singer. His name was Marcel, after Proust.

I also own a great pyrenees dog named Mathilde, after Eleanor of Aquitaine's mother-in-law. And my poodle is Anna, which would have been the name of the girl child I never had, so I decided to use it on a puppy instead. When the boys were younger, they used to pretend to be Anna's brothers. Their dog names were Arnold and Arfold.

My most recent cat was Miss Frankenstein (the poodle treed a kitten on Halloween and then begged to bring her home), and once I had a cat named Dinah, after Alice's cat in Through the Looking Glass. But as a relief from this referential list, you might also like to know that my mother's favorite cat of all time was named Twerp.