Danger, Danger, DANGER. Tens upon tens upon tens of thousands of people from Central America are invading the United States.

Invading.

What are we to do?

At least that’s the word from the Republican side of the universe, which is really nice this time of year, I hear.

(Well, nice if you believe illusion trumps science and you are passionately certain that the Tooth Fairy exists but dinosaurs didn’t. Or if they did, they coexisted with humans. I hear, through the grapevine, that the Republicans are thinking of changing the name of the Tooth Fairy, for reasons I don’t quite understand.)

Meanwhile, back at the invasion, it turns out that the human beings invading the United States are children.

By children, I mean children. If they were to show up in Iowa City, the local authorities would bust them for presence in a bar after hours, if not PAULA. End of problem. (Isn’t that the way it works?)

So we should call out the troops to protect us from children, as some Republicans have called for?

What are we — well, Republicans, which isn’t exactly us — afraid of? Lord of the Flies?

Apparently, Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, is deathly afraid of Lord of the Flies. He warns us (ignore him at your own peril) that the “children’s invasion” puts “our continued existence at risk.” No, really.

I’m surprised he didn’t label it the Children’s Crusade, although that ended disastrously (circa 1212).

Well, it ended disastrously if it ever occurred, and many historians believe the tale of said crusade is apocryphal.

But Gohmert, whose congressional district is in eastern Texas, bordering Louisiana, and quite a fair distance from the Rio Grande (if anything in Texas can be considered to be fair), wants the great state of Texas to pull out all the stops and use troops and “warships” (his words) to stop the “invasion.”

Um, first of all, I wasn’t aware that the great state of Texas had any warships. I thought that was the purview of the U.S. Navy.

Second of all, where are those warships supposed to go? On July 18, according to the USGS, the river level at Castolon, Texas, spiked at 5.5 feet. Yes, 5.5. By July 20, the river there measured 3.5 feet. What U.S. warship, exactly, does Gohmert believe could operate in such shallow water?

Yes, Castolon is in the Big Bend area of the Rio Grande, a long way from Brownsville, near where the river empties into the Gulf of Mexico. But, because of dams and water diversions for irrigation, the Rio Grande isn’t so grande.

So what are we going to do? Haul the battleship Iowa out of mothballs, station it off the coast, and have it lob shells the size of Volkswagen Beetles into the border area?

But, Gohmert asserts, this “children’s invasion” is larger than the D-Day invasion in World War II.

Really? The D-Day invasion, according to many reports (including the D-Day Memorial website, included more than 5,000 ships, 11,000 planes, and 150,000 troops. Well, we know that the children don’t have any ships or planes, and we know they don’t number 150,000. The figures I’ve seen number from 44,000 to 52,000, not exactly D-Day.

Of course, the Obama administration is part of a conspiracy behind the “children’s invasion.” The GOP will probably also find out Obama fired the missile that shot down the Malaysian jetliner.

The Republican side of the universe. It’s really nice this time or year, I hear. The rest of us have to deal with gnats.