Stoats live life in the fast lane.

So you're a DOC worker, a low-level copywriter of instructional placards. It's Thursday night. You were told by your supervisor, a muesli chewing non-lesbian but the kind of person who everytime someone new starts work someone from the staff has to explain that no, the supervisor is not a lesbian, she just doesn't have a very good stylist - that you need to have a few placards designed by 5pm friday.

This friday, as in tomorrow.

Holy shit, right? Where does that mulleted bitch get off? She doesn't get off, you realize. She lives alone. You are sad for her, and as that sadness creeps into your heart you remember the kindness the supervisor showed in hiring you in the first place, you a scrappy tramping enthusiast from the mean streets of Balclutha with a penchant for alliteration and a lot of heart. And you get to work. But not before having a few beers! Beer is great.

So maybe you're a little drunk. And maybe you've had one of those weeks with Germans asking if "das is satisfying, das tracks?" and people calling from the paper with the oh-so-fucking-prescient realization that hey, maybe it's a little hypocritical for DOC to poison an entire population out of existence in the name of conservation, like where's the line drawn between shaping New Zealand into a bird-filled tourism haven it never really was and, you know, not poisoning things which, when you think about it, are actually cuter - we're talking about stoats now - than flightless birds. I mean, come on, flightless birds? That's like blingless rappers. They got nobody to blame but themselves when they lose street-cred/are eaten along with the hatchlings they try valiantly to defend.

The beer you drank is Tui, which is a New Zealand brand that tastes slightly less like snake urine than Speight's and slightly more like snake urine than Monteith's Celtic. Tui is also the name of one of New Zealand's birds. Here's a story about how the Tui got a white spot on it's breast. The tui got a white spot on its breast when Sparky the Omniscient Nature Deity, or whatever, asked for a bird to live on the forest floor and, I don't know, make sure the newspapers didn't pile up on the front porch or something. And the tui wouldn't do it. Nor would the cuckoo. But everybody's favorite fucking bird, the Kiwi, volunteered, and instead of rewarding the kiwi with, you know, some capacity to fight off a common stoat, Sparky gave the tui a mark of shame and banished the cuckoo into a lucrative evolutionary niche in which he never had to make his own nest. Man, Sparky, good job there. I totally have faith in you to oversee the natural environment of New Zealand now.

So you're feeling better about the Tui, both the delicious potent potable and the worry-free bird with the common sense to retain the capacity to fly the hell away from stoats, than you are about the bird you're supposed to be singing the praises of, the yellow-cheeked mumblefuck, which is dying out but quick in the Dart Valley do to always opening the nest door when the stoat gets into it's adorable UPS-driver suit and knocks on the door saying "package for delicious yellow-cheeked bird. Please sign."

And you start, looking at the picture of a stoat you just placed on the placard, to feel a little bit of sympathy for the stoat. It's not the stoat's fault it was introduced. It's not the stoat's fault your supervisor can't get laid. It's not the stoat's fault you killed a man in Balclutha when he suggested that Owaka had a nicer grocery store, and now you can never return. So you introduce your section on stoats and why they're so darned successful with the following phrase:

Stoats live life in the fast lane.

You are inspired. The rest of your placard, as you present it at 4:30pm the next day, is as follows:

Stoats live life in the fast lane. They take no prisoners. If you're a bird, and you're bopping about on the forest floor, and you feel a sharp pain on your neck? Guess what, bitch, you just got your ass stoated. Damn. Stoats know how to hunt and they know how to love. Stoat females? Always pregnant. Stoat males? Always swaggering contentedly. Stoat children? Never go open closed doors at home without knocking, because mom's a sex machine and dad's a smooth operator. Anyway, stoats are so awesome they kill all the stupid birds so we have about a billion traps to keep them from becoming, like, kings of New Zealand. We're basically cheating.
Of course, your supervisor, before presenting your placard to her supervisor, who is a lesbian and has a good stylist - word! stereotypes are dumb! - takes out all but the first sentence. Because she respects your pluck, but she knows better than to challenge the system. The system has been good to her.