Hey there, you with the smile on your face up there in Jackman, sitting around in Schmooses Pub & Grill on Main Street having a Bud Lite, or at Mama Bears on Alt Main Trail. I caution you to “see something, say something.”

I know you’re lucky; you know all your neighbors because they’re all your cousins, and after all these years you’ve felt safe, comfy and cozy. You burn your wood, and make your tourtiere pie for supper and mind your own business. Most of you don’t even lock your doors at night. What’s to worry?

You folks in Madawaska and Fort Kent fare pretty much the same. It’s Maine, we don’t get hurricanes and tornadoes, mass murders, race riots; and Reny’s doesn’t have Ivanka Trump close-out sales. It’s Maine, the way life should be.

But take heed — have you noticed any strangers in your local gas stations or McDonald’s asking for directions? Have you, or any of your friends, had a “monthly domestic encounter” lately? Let me explain.

A domestic encounter is what your local FBI office calls “an encounter with a known or suspected terrorist.”

In Maine? Yessir, right here in beautiful Vacationland. If you have had one of these “encounters,” you should call your local FBI Terrorist Screening Center so they can fill out a report. Your taxes are paying for this service.

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Now, don’t panic and start loading your guns, but in seven of such reports, it’s noted that the number of “encounters” at land border crossings were higher in northern states than southern.

“Border crossings?” you say. “You mean like down there in Mexico? Is our president fixin’ to build a wall up here?”

Calm down. I accidentally stumbled on this scary news when I came across writer Jana Winter’s piece on the Daily Beast, an online daily news and opinion website I’ve become addicted to, and that I feel I should share with my friends in the county.

Jana was told by a senior official at the Department of Homeland Security that “we are looking in the wrong direction.” Really?

This news implies that Trump’s special agents Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway, the Lucy and Desi of the West Wing, have been wrongly focusing their security laser beam on Mexico and the southern border, where, they think, “bad hombres” are “pouring into the country” from Mexico.

Why, you might ask, should we here in Vacationland be troubled about the fears of all those flat-landers down in taco truck land?

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It turns out that Canada — yes, that country you can see from your deck — has become door No. 3 for Trump’s “bad hombres” to cross over to get us.

Apparently they’re coming right down over the border from Canada, all parka and snowshoed, mittened and armed to do us harm.

According to the FBI, more “watch listed individuals” were encountered at land border crossings on our northern border states than in all states on the Mexican border combined.

Well, I challenge that.

Ask yourself, if you were a “bad hombre” from the Middle East, where the average daily temperature is around 118 degrees, why would you come through Madawaska, where only split pea soup comes to 118 degrees?

And to slog through 6 or 7 feet of snow, risk falling through the ice, get run over by a teenager on a snowmobile, or get shot by a guy with a 12-gauge from his ice fishing shack, surely isn’t covered by jihadist Medicare.

Why put up with ice cold tourtiere or Saturday Night beans and franks in a diner in Caribou, when you can cut a hole in a fence in Arizona and get some spicy tacos and ice cold Dos Equis, a few shots of Patron Tequila and a wrap?

I myself never go any farther north than Bangor, but I’m willing to do my part for national defense and keep my eyes peeled. Pass the Dos Equis; leave the Bud.

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer.


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