I own two stuffed ani­mals. One is a cow­boy teddy bear my par­ents bought me dur­ing my brief stage career in high school, when I appeared in Crazy For You as a cho­rus cow­boy. I also appeared in Inherit The Wind as Bert Cates. I received no stuffed ani­mal for that one because no stuffed ani­mal really makes peo­ple think 'evo­lu­tion' and a stuffed appen­dix would be gross. Or per­haps my per­for­mance didn't rate it.

The teddy bear (no pic­ture at the moment) is wait­ing for a place of honor in the house. I never have got­ten round to putting up shelves in any place I ever lived, but if I change and finally put some up, he will def­i­nitely be in the liv­ing room to inspire oohs and awws from the girls and pro­vide an open­ing to dis­cuss my super­nova of a career in high school drama.

I also have a stuffed otter. The otter is from an excel­lent week­end jaunt down to Wichita where I hung out with my friend Katie. I went to a cof­fee shop and the zoo. The zoo trip was to see my favorite ani­mals, otters, and my sec­ond favorite, pen­guins. These were the lit­tle travel-size pen­guins and I hoped to buy a bag of them at the sou­venir shop. Like gup­pies at the pet store. They didn't have any so I bought the stuffed otter. He is about two feet tall, bal­anc­ing upright on his hind legs and tail. He is adorably cute and soft. I named him Oscar and he watches over my things and guests in the liv­ing room. My guests haven't stolen any­thing, so he is obvi­ously doing a fine job.

Another rea­son for the otter is atten­tion. When peo­ple enter my house for the first time they ask why I have a large otter look­ing down from the fire­place. It seems like a per­fect joke setup with the guest as the unwit­ting straight man, but it falls down because there is noth­ing funny to say about otters. I know one otter joke:

"What ani­mal would you like to be on a cold day?"
"Otter!"

That's it. Otters are funny to watch and they're great at adorable and cute, but they are not funny to talk about. At least not like pen­guins. Pen­guins are com­edy gold. But until I can buy pen­guins at the Wichita Zoo I have to work with the otter. Except I don't have any­thing clever to say yet when peo­ple ask about Oscar. The best I've done so far is "he fol­lowed me home from the zoo" or "meet my hir­sute midget uncle! No jokes, though, he otterly lacks a sense of humor!" So noth­ing clever.

I cover by describ­ing my plans of fit­ting him with a motor­ized roller­skate so he can wan­der about the house. Then there is ten sec­onds of awk­ward silence. Then I say "and let me show you the upstairs" and move on. Otters just aren't funny.