Hi Paul,
it seems very bad that you have decoupled animationState from creatureAction, may I know reason for this ?
I didn't write the first code but for being the guy that spent a lot of time on it earlier when removing some code complexity there (and the use of gotos...),
I would say that decoupling the animation from the action logic is a good thing at least for it permits to have the same animation for several actions, for instance, or easily change/add/remove the action used for a given animation and vice-versa.
Also, in game programming more than anything else, you should alway try to decouple the update logic (here the action decision logic) from the rendering code (the animation logic). So, without any strong reason to do what you want to do, I'd say: Don't do it.
Now, can I know what are reasons you want to change things there?
Best regards,