This is it reduced to 16345 bytes... where I though I'd leave it, just out of interest, to let you find out whether the limit is normal person's 16K, as in "16,000" bytes, or the programmers 2^15=16,384 bytes.
Should you choose to use it as your avatar, I would guess rather a few people will either block it (like I do), or skip straight past your posts, without reading them, because the avatar it too distracting.

To obtain this, from your original, I used:
Code:
gifsicle --colors 6 < playingwithfireng3.gif |gifsicle -O2 > try.gif
I.e. I reduced the number of distinct colours to 6 (which didn't seem to make any noticable difference) and then optimised the file.
Further reducing the colours to 5 dropped the size down to 14,275 but lost the pale blue for the puddle. To gain those last 345 bytes, I'd probably delete an odd frame or two from the 55 frames of the animation.
And all those moaning. So what?
Its my avatar and I choose what avatar I like (within reason).
Sorry, if I sound ever so arrogant, but thats what happens when I speak my mind aloud.