Everyone Can Remember Your Name When It’s Strange

It’s safe to say I have some insight into the world of unfortunate nicknames. You can only put up with that dopey question--”Hi Barbie! Where’s Ken?”--a few thousand times before you start arming yourself with equally inane responses.

Ken? Oh, Ken! Didn’t you hear? Ken ran off with Trixie to open a dim sum stand in Mozambique. I hear he’s quite a whiz with moo shu shrimp. You really ought to check it out!

Or you’ll get this question:

Barbie? Barbie? That’s not really your name is it?

No, you say. My real name is Petunia Pig. Barbie is just one of the dozen or so aliases I use to keep the FBI at bay. Any other questions?

We bring this up to introduce our concern over the latest nickname to spring from the Orange County sports world. And, no, we don’t mean the Mighty Ducks or those devilish Mission Viejo Diablos. We mean the Wolverines--the Aliso Niguel High School Wolverines, debuting this fall in Aliso Viejo.

Now this isn’t to say there is anything particularly wrong with the Wolverine nickname--outside of Michigan, that is. It makes for a snappy little cheer (“Turn ‘em green, Wolverine,”) and a chic-sounding pre-game meal (Cuisine de Wolverine). And it definitely lends a certain ferocity. After all, we’re talking about a nasty-tempered beast with razor-sharp claws and teeth who loves nothing more than tearing into a hunk of fresh, warm caribou, you know.

But a wolverine in Orange County? Doesn’t a school’s nickname usually have something to do with its environment or its history?

Aliso Niguel Principal Denise Danne says she didn’t choose the name; she left that up to the 350 or so students who showed up to vote on it last month. Joe Wood, the school’s football coach, said the students were asked to try to select something indigenous to the area, so they narrowed their choices to these: Knights, Griffins, Wolverines and Sharks.

Suggested homework assignment for Day 1 at Aliso Niguel: Write a five-paragraph essay on the meaning of the word “indigenous.”

Actually, there seem to be plenty of appropriate nicknames out there for a South County school. You might start with a theme natural for the area--ruinous overdevelopment--and take it from there:

The Aliso Niguel Bulldozers, the Earth Movers, the Masterplanners, the Strip Malls. . . .

Or a positive, pro-active approach: the Recyclers, the Environmentalists, the Tree-Huggers. Considering the threat to a particular feathered friend, wouldn’t the Aliso Niguel Gnatcatchers be apropos?

Then again, who knows? Maybe Wolverines have been roaming around Orange County for years. Maybe they’ve been bodysurfing the Wedge, shopping at South Coast Plaza, doing that Orange County coffee house scene--all without our noticing. We decided we’d better check it out.

Our first call was to Ron Glazier, director of the Santa Ana Zoo. No, Ron said, there are no wolverines in Orange County. They’re mainly in Canada and the northern United States. Ron informed us that while wolverines are flesh-eaters, they’re quite happy to slurp up bug larvae, too. We thanked Ron for this fascinating tidbit.

Next, a local environmental nature center. An employee there said she didn’t think wolverines ever made it this far south. “But don’t quote me on that because then I’d have to look it up,” she said.

Chuck Erickson, owner of Erickson Dead Stock, a service that cleans up local road kill, says he has never picked up a wolverine carcass in this area. “To be honest,” Chuck said, “I couldn’t even tell you what one looked like.”

Finally, a quick call to Ripley’s Believe It Or Not in Buena Park revealed that while there were no wolverines in the museum, Ripley’s did, in fact, have a genuine, stuffed eight-legged pig currently on display if we were interested.

We weren’t, but we’ll admit it started us thinking.

Eight-legged pigs? If people actually plunk down $8.95--Ripley’s adult ticket price--to see such a thing, maybe that says something. Maybe that’s why there are teams like the Ojai Valley “Spuds” and the Ribet Academy “Fighting Frogs” and the Dunn High “Earwigs.” Maybe strangeness sells. Perhaps Aliso Niguel ought to re-nickname itself the Tube-Nosed Fruit Bats or the Sulphur-Crested Cockatoos.

Perhaps not. After all, it’s still pretty weird to see a wolverine in Orange County.