Otters

What are you?
I'm an otter. I swim around on my back doing cute little human things with my hands.
Thank you, you're free to go. What are you?
I'm a cow--
Get on the back of the truck!
-- Bill Hicks.

Joss Whedon and Neil Gaiman in conversation. They are otters.

Gaiman: One of the reasons that both Joss and I can do some of the stuff that we've done over the years is because you're working in a medium in which enough stuff has simply entered popular culture that it becomes part of the vocabulary that we can deal with. The materials of fantasy, of all different kinds of fantasy, the materials of SF, the materials of horror...it's pop culture. It's tattooed on the insides of our retinas. As a result, it's something that's very easy just to use as metaphor. You don't have to explain to anybody what a vampire is. You don't have to explain the rules. Everybody knows that. They know that by the time they're five.