A Sea Lion

Geography is the key, the crucial accident of birth.  A piece of protein could be a snail, a sea lion, or a systems analyst, but it had to start somewhere.  This is not science; it is merely metaphor.  And the landscape in which the protein "starts" shapes its end as surely as bowls shape water.

-- Annie Dillard (30 April 1945 -), American author and winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1974, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters (2009)