Ostracism
My first guess was that this word would share some root with the ostrich, who ostracises himself by that familiar head-in-the-ground technique. Turns out I'm a bad guesser.
Turns out that "ostracism" comes from ostrakon, the Greek word for tile. The Greeks had this habit of getting together and writing on tiles the names of men deemed dangerous to the the state, and then kicking those men out of society. And while my ostrich guess was a bit off, it does turn out that the self-secluding oyster draws his name from the same root syllables.
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