ping problem in Terminal

Hey folks,

I've been having a problem with my Terminal window on one of my Mac laptops - the MacBook 15" white model running the latest Snow Leopard. I install developer software and use the command line quite a bit, so you might imagine this problem has been quite frustrating. I haven't been able to use ping! Here's what I see:

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INYC-MacBook-2:~ stevewarren$ ping www.google.com
usage: ping [-AaDdfnoQqRrv] [-b boundif] [-c count] [-G sweepmaxsize] [-g sweepminsize]
[-h sweepincrsize] [-i wait] [-l preload] [-M mask | time] [-m ttl]
[-p pattern] [-S src_addr] [-s packetsize] [-t timeout]
[-W waittime] [-z tos] host
ping [-AaDdfLnoQqRrv] [-c count] [-I iface] [-i wait] [-l preload]
[-M mask | time] [-m ttl] [-p pattern] [-S src_addr]
[-s packetsize] [-T ttl] [-t timeout] [-W waittime]
[-z tos] mcast-group
INYC-MacBook-2:~ stevewarren$

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I get the same result when I ping another computer on my local network with it's IP number. When I ssh into that machine, which proves it actually exists on my network, I can ping www.google.com and get the results I expect to see on my Mac laptop. Something like:

Reply from 98.137.149.56: bytes=32 time=97ms TTL=49

If anyone could shed some light on what might be causing this, I'd be very thankful in advance!

Happy Halloween.

-steve warren