Careening toward the Canadian border, we are snow-blind, forcing forward, following fat clouds.

Finally, we arrive. Join the juxtaposition and encounter a lengthy line of snowmobiles, hockey players and Bigfoot. Peering up at the checkpoint, we see motorists collared and searched, probed, and the rectal exams begin, asses hanging from car windows, border-crossers stood spreadeagle, Canuck Grim Reaper Bots extending robotic arms, latex gloves snapping back in coruscating flashes of light.

My Adam’s apple bobs up and down as I dart a glance at a Bigfoot bending over, propped against a plastic palm tree, a gloved Canuck Bot’s hand halfway up Bigfoot’s butt. Then a gust of wind splashes a sheet of snow at our windshield, coloring everything milky, blurry white...

“We should have just snuck in through the woods or taken a hot-air balloon,” Melvin affirms as he’s probing his nose with pliers and plucking nose-hairs meticulously in the rearview mirror.

But what if the Canuck Bots caught you? I ponder...

The Canuck Bots nor the Canucks are usually violent. But they could be, right? All that politeness. All those niceties. I’ll bet inside every Canadian, there’s a raging monster, an anger, a pressure cooker, a bomb waiting to explode. Any Canadian could be a merciless killer given the temptation and opportunity.

An aggrieved Canadian, that could be the world’s most dangerous animal. Aside from playing hockey, the world doesn’t know what the Canadians are plotting, what they’re doing up there. I envisage dark, insidious actors, underground ice-bunkers, and cutting-edge weapons in the hands of polite and helpful neighbors.

“Jeffery Dahmer was a Canadian,” mentions Melvin, who’s slapping rhythmically on the dashboard, along to the drumbeat of Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks.”

Shaking my head, I proclaim that “no, he was a Wisconsinite ... Similar accent, though.”

Melvin curls his upper lip in disgust, mentioning that that explains everything, and there are “no worse people than the Wisconsinites.”

Oh no, the Canadians are way worse, I insist. Their Mounties are monsters. The Mounties created like Frankenstein, monsters made from assembled body parts, the evil beings born sniffing for blood. Officers of Satan, the Mounties. The Mounties, militaristic, riding on battle moose, moose themselves perfected in laboratories, moose decked out in body armor, moose fitted with jet engines and wings, moose on clandestine flying moose missions; the flying moose fitted with machine guns, missiles, and laser beams blasting from moose asses and antlers.

It’s like I tell Melvin, moose run incredibly fast, too, for an animal that size, moose reaching a peak running speed of 35 MPH...

“Even if they don’t fly the moose, just imagine those Mounties on moose back, those moose hoofs clattering and the Mounties making morbid battle cries, sounds worse than Celine Dion’s most dreadful multi-octave wails.

“Imagine Frankenstein riding a rodeo bull like a racehorse.”

“Or a war elephant,” Melvin opines, and I nod my head tacitly, and I continue, “It’s sinister ... Far worse than the Wisconsinites’ black bear trampoline terror campaigns and rattlesnake catapult attacks,” I assert, plainly, and not even Melvin will argue this...

Our car inches closer. Melvin is practically licking the windshield. The snow slips wet, clearing the screen, leaving us with only the fuzzy outlines of oncoming Canadians.

Melvin has been stirring in his seat. Says the last time he attempted to enter Canada, the immigration officer refused his entry, without explanation, aside from hinting that Melvin looked too poor to be able to fund his stay in Canada.

It’s like I tell Melvin, you can’t wear dirty basketball shorts in winter and turtleneck trench coats in summer without repercussions ... At least today he’s in a pink tutu, glasses/nose/mustache disguise and a wrinkly old Wizards Jordan jersey...

The line speeds up, fast. We unbuckle our belts, prepare to be fingered.

“Heck, I might even enjoy it...” I mention, reaching down to unzip my fly.

The stink-hungry border guards are 30ish; they are red-faced men, troglodytes, with slow-moving eyes and potbellies. They only peer at our passports, and one of the border guards pops his head into the car, scans around, then grunts and nods. These Canadians are far gruffer than I’d pictured. They speak in a trembling tone that sounds forced, and one of them only speaks French to us.

But they let us pass, unmolested, and I feel a sense of release ease over me, a burden lifted.