I think we need to start worrying about the stingrays. Well, if the political commercials running ever five seconds around here are to be believed we should be worrying about the nine trillion illegal immigrants currently streaming across our borders each with explosives strapped to their waists. According to the commercials I have seen the immigrants are likely to come into your home in the middle of the night, take our women, then our jobs and then our homes. Also I guess Democratic Congressmen and women will feed them our babies. At least, that’s what the commercials sponsored by the Republican Party seem to be saying but I cannot imagine they would use scare tactics or anything, would they? No, I think they’re just distracting us from the stingrays.

You see a couple of months ago the “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin was killed while swimming with a stingray. It seemed like a freak accident. However, I am starting to think it was some kind of assassination on behalf of the stingrays. Sure, kill the one guy who knew enough about animals that he might see their nefarious plans. No one would believe a harmless stingray would do something deliberate like that. Besides with one shot that stingray discovered our week spot.

Now a couple of weeks ago a man was fishing somewhere around the United States and a stingray actually jumped right into his boat. You know this was some kind of suicide mission, right? He stabbed this old man who was just tooling around in his boat right in the heart. See, same M.O. as the one that got Irwin. You just know the Irwin thing was transmitted via some kind of stingray cable news network or something. If you stab them in their hearts they’ll die. Stop stabbing them in the feet when they step on you.

The old man seems to have beaten the stingray, though. I could be mistaken because, as I write this, he could have taken some tragic turn for the worst. But as of this writing he had managed to keep the barb in his heart which seems to have saved his life. The barb plugged the hole and that saved him. No word has come back, as far as I know, about what happened to the stingray.

You know it would have to come from the seemingly harmless animal. But there’s something about a stingray that just screams animal terrorist. It hides in the sand. It gets close to the swimmers. I don’t know how many big secrets are discussed among humans wading in waters infested with stingrays but I am betting it’s enough to have given them an edge. They probably have all kinds of stingray listening devices, perhaps disguised as seashells, scattered all over the beaches of the world.

In the meantime the stingrays were planning and plotting. Distract the humans by killing the big guy and then knock out the old codger with the yacht. A lot of very prominent and powerful people have yachts. Business people have yachts. Even now I am betting there are stingrays plotting to board various yachts to take businessmen and women hostage. You can just see them now sharpening their barbs and writing their demands, perhaps on seashells.

You see, that’s how they get to you. They sneak across the borders disguised as people just desperate for work and before you know it you have a Mexican immigrant trained by Al Qaida standing in your bedroom with a sharpened barb or something. At least, that’s what the Republicans seem to be saying.

They look so innocent. It’s a great act those Mexicans put on. They must go to great lengths to look desperately poor. Think of the cost of building those rundown shacks they try to convince us they live in. Then think of all of the training of all of those actors to play the desperate family members. Like we don’t know that the hills in Mexico run with gold the way most mountains run with water. Wasn’t that why the Spanish conquered the country in the first place?

It may even be possible that the Mexicans are working in cahoots with the stingrays. Sure, most of the stingrays are in warmer water near the border. You train a bunch of attack-rays and have them off the retiree yacht-owning population and while all of the families are fighting over the inheritances you just sweep in and take all of the below-minimum-wage jobs that are out there. Then what do you have? You have anarchy.

Quite obviously George W. Bush has known this all along. That must be why he wears that dumb expression on his face all of the time. It’s all an act. He was told about the stingrays and told to just act like he was dumb. You can lull stingrays into a false sense of security by playing dumb like that. Try it the next time you’re on your yacht.

I am betting right now there are evil illegal immigrant Mexican scientists right now breeding stingrays that can survive in fresh water. Right now there are probably fleets of semi-trailers driving toward the Great Lakes looking to dump thousands of the things into them. Some day you will turn on the tap in your kitchen and thousands of little stingrays will fall out. Either that or microscopic illegal immigrant Al Qaida Mexicans each carrying stingray bombs. They’re sneaky that way. If it were up to the Democrats, evidently, they would give the Mexicans maps to the best places to dump the killer stingrays and give them all keys to our houses.

So, obviously the thing to do is keep the Republicans in office. Since they’ve been in office there have been only two confirmed stingray attacks so, obviously, they are doing something right to keep us safe from them. There are probably hundreds of stingrays being held prisoner in some country right now being tortured by other governments to give up their insidious plan to allow Mexicans to take over our country. The Republicans know this. In fact, they knew this all along. Apparently Clinton started to allow the stingrays close to shore back in the 90s. That’s why we had to attack Iraq. It’s all about the stingrays.

So, feel safe in casting your votes for the Republicans in the election. Yes, both of you that actually plan on voting out there. The country may have destroyed most of the Constitution and thrown out the Bill of Rights. The nation’s debt may have skyrocketed. The war may be out of control with no clear exit strategy. None of that matters because the Republicans will keep us safe.

Just make sure you watch out for the stingrays. Especially those of you with yachts. You’d better just vote Republican twice to be safe.

Bryan W. Alaspa’s new novel Dust is now available for sale at his website www.bryanalaspa.com and www.amazon.com.