At work Friday, I was curious about a fairly simple fact, but none of the three people at work who might know did in fact know. Not too surprising, but they were the only ones at work who might know. If it'd been a critical matter, I'm sure they could have talked to other co-workers, or I could have, in an ever-spreading circle.. and then the information once found would eventually get passed back to me once someone who knew was found, assuming there weren't meant dead branches to the informational tree.

Now, this is something I could look up right now. I have the power of the Internet, and with Google and Wikipedia at my fingertips, I could know this in under five minutes. But that's not personal knowledge. It's research. I was fairly certain that somewhere this would be a known fact, that it could be reached without looking it up.

So, of course, I'm turning to LiveJournal. This is a challenge of sorts, to others. The rules are simple.

1. If you know the answer to the question, post it here.
2. If you don't, you can ask someone you know whom is likely to know the answer.
3. You can't look it up in a reference work, except to confirm the answer. If you thought you knew, and when looking it up your idea was wrong, you can't give me the answer.

Got it? This is to see who knows this, for whom this is intrinsic knowledge. To make it interesting, I will award a prize: 2 months of paid LJ time to the first person who can post answer as a response, or the equivalent ($5) in some form.

So, the question.

What is the Chinese word for 'mongoose'? (Any dialect is fine, pronunciation or written character is fine.)

And yes, I know it's a question that's zero surprise I'd ask.

--Chiaroscuro