My uncle embodies what every foreigner thinks Americans are. He has more guns in his display cases than teeth in his head. He drinks way too much, always wears a baseball cap and takes a perverse pleasure in slaying small woodland creatures, many of which he's had stuffed so he can display them on the walls of his home, or as I like to call the joint; the 'Hall of Horrors.'� The little creature's faces forever frozen in time, usually with a snarl ' as if a rabbit can be vicious. To say nothing of his 'jack-a-lope'� and his 'My Gun Cleaning Hat'� which is bright orange and riddled with mock bullet holes.

He drives a truck with both a gun rack and an NRA bumper sticker with a slogan about 'prying his gun from his cold dead fingers.'� I guess he plans to die in a blaze of glory, defending his right to bear arms while left-wing radicals storm his house to relieve him of his precious arsenal. I don't particularly like guns and I wouldn't dream of trying to take them away from him. But I don't understand why he feels the need to hunt deer with an automatic machine gun. Maybe he's a bad shot and doesn't want to admit it, so he just goes into the woods and patiently waits for a foraging deer to pop its head out so he can spray bullets in its general direction. He probably figures that if he unloads a clip of 20 bullets one is bound to hit.

Thankfully this man and I share no blood. He married my aunt about ten years ago and their marriage has been a fairy tale story of misery and resentment ever since.

'I'm leaving you Jay!'� my aunt screams.

He usually just pours himself another drink and slips her a couple of hundred dollars to go shopping. This seems to appease her for a while.

'Your family is driving a wedge between us Wendy!'� he'll yell.

She just pours him a drink and pulls him into the bedroom, where they 'work it out.'� I shudder to think of what those summits are all about.

They first met while working at the same restaurant. Jay owned it while Wendy managed the books. My family always considered their marriage to be one of convenience. This doesn't add up for me, they both seem to go through so much trouble to avoid each other. I could never see how that was convenient at all. In fact it always seemed downright bothersome.

My uncle was forced to shut his restaurant down. The owner of the building decided it would make better business sense to level the place and sell the property to a condo developer. The one thing that made their life together bearable was the disposable income they were able to lift from the restaurant's till everyday. Wendy would just juggle some numbers and hundreds of dollars would magically appear in their hands. Jay spent the money on guns and Wendy bought worthless, tacky, house ornamentations, usually with a floral or angel theme. The salad days had drawn to a close.

With the loss of their income, disposable and otherwise, Wendy and Jay were forced to fill their days with something other than financial acrobatics and mindless spending. Wendy decided to become a professional patient; collecting doctors, ailments and prescriptions at an astonishing and admirable speed. Her bum knee, chronic back pain and faulty uterus provided more than enough drugs to medicate the people of Guam.

While Wendy was content to spend her days lounging around the house, leaving only to visit one of her army of doctors or to fill a fistful of prescriptions, Jay was inclined to leave the house and search out some means of putting money into their ever-dwindling savings account.

What he came up with was an odd mixture of work and pleasure for him. He decided to open an animal trapping and disposal company. He also managed to land a major account with the county of Palm Beach to dispose of its non-exotic road kill. This meant that he was assigned to pick up the unfortunate animals that wandered onto our streets and were struck by passing cars. But he was limited to animals classified as non-exotic. I could never quite put my finger on this distinction. Did it mean he could pick up dead dogs and raccoons but was forbidden to touch the many llamas and sloths that litter our roads and highways?
He eventually lost the contract for foggy reasons. All I know is that it had something to do with a tranquilizer gun, a bottle of scotch and an alligator. I never asked any questions.

The county gig paid pretty well, but it wasn't enough to satisfy him. He supplemented it by picking up dead animals from Lion Country Safari, a local tourist trap with large pastures, dirty elephants, and sleepy lions. I remember him pulling into his house with a dead giraffe in the flatbed of his truck, its long neck and large head hanging over the back, bouncing like a damp noodle from the ruts in his dirt and gravel driveway. Jay gave me the giraffe's bleached skull to display in my apartment. I hung it on the wall and admired its shape.

Sometimes I would help him out to get some extra cash. I remember one time picking up a dead dog on one of the main highways. The dog had been there for a few days and was a battlefield of maggots, ants and beetles. I was wretching and trying very hard to not throw up all over this micro-ecosystem.

'Put your shirt over your nose and use the shovel to put it in the sack,'� he yelled from the truck while he sipped his scotch and soda and giggled. I eventually did throw up while he stood over me laughing. The humor escaped me, and hoping it would dawn on me with the objectivity of time, I decided helping him with carcasses was not the gig for me.

He also did trapping of live animals for various towns and scared housewives. This would often involve setting a trap with a can of cat food and coming back the next day to retrieve the unfortunate possum or raccoon from the little steel prison. I know he would tell the people he worked for that he would release them somewhere else, so they could go free instead of being destroyed. He told them this to relieve their guilt. Deep down they all knew the animals lived there first and that if anyone should have been disposed of it was them.

Of course, as soon as he was out of sight he would pull over and put a bullet through their little brains. He became a hit man for a mythical animal mob, getting rid of all the creatures that ventured too close to human dwellings. I always wondered what was on his mind as he pulled the trigger and watched the carnage at his feet. He would take the carcasses to the local dump, where he became a regular; the guys would say, 'Got another one back there Jay?'� To which he would respond, 'Yeah! Got another live one for ya','� with a chuckle and a swig of his scotch and soda. It always bothered me how he seemingly felt nothing for all the death around him. Dropping animals off like so much trash so they could decay into methane in peace.

Not all of his caught animals were killed. There were some he could sell -- more money! He was often summoned to capture unwanted ducks at various local parks, which he could sell for a few dollars apiece to a local duck farmer. This was proving difficult; they were 'just too quick'� for him. He asked me if I would accompany him on one of these trips to try and 'corner the little fuckers.'� He figured two clumsy oafs were better than one.

We arrived at the park in Greenacres (that's really the name of the town) to collect this motley crew of wayward ducks. They were all mutts, not a Mallard in sight. And they eyed us with suspicion from the moment he parked his smelly truck in the lot. The constant blood bath in the bed of his truck made for a very distinct odor. Despite the fact Jay washed the truck out with bleach and water on a daily basis; it still reeked of death and decay; as did his driveway where the bloody water from washing his truck collected in pools. He could never comprehend why I didn't think it was a good idea for children to play in his front yard. Surely the ducks smelled us long before they saw us.

We began the work of collecting the ducks with a fistful of stale bread, luring them to come closer. The bait brought them closer, until Jay made a grab for one. It ran like hell, as did all of its friends. They were a little more careful when they came for round two. Jay tried to grab another and they scattered again. We continued this cycle for another half an hour or so, with no luck. Finally, Jay decided he should get one of his casting nets. His plan was simple. I would hide behind a tree while he lured the ducks past me. Once they had their backs turned I was to throw the net over as many as possible. After three tries with this method, and not one duck captured; I began frantically chasing the ducks and throwing the net in their direction. Charging ducks and throwing something at them is not conducive to capturing them. They just scattered and quaked; my net falling ineffectually to the ground.

We were beginning to draw the attention of the families in the park. They were cheering and I was encouraged by this show of affection, until I realized it was the ducks they were rooting for. As I ran around chasing ducks with the net I began to feel more and more absurd. I like ducks, a lot, so I asked Jay why it was necessary to remove these guys from their peaceful home. He said the town wanted it that way because they were shitting all over the fresh concrete. This was incredible to me, selling free-range ducks to a duck farmer to lead a life of slavery and abuse and all because they shat where they weren't supposed to.

But the 'We vs. Them'� mentality aroused my sense of competition. We had to capture at least one of these ducks. Ordinarily I would have been standing by the monkey bars and whistling for the ducks escape myself. But the situation pitted us in a life and death battle. Our self-respect was at stake, mutt ducks with no lineage or distinguishing marks could not be allowed to beat us.

Eventually, Jay got his hands on one of them and started heading for the truck where the little cages they were to be transported in lay in wait. Inwardly my heart sang, partly because we weren't totally defeated and because we could now leave with our integrity intact. Then the duck bit Jay and wriggled loose while he clutched his finger in pain. The ever growing crowd of children and their parents clapped and whooped. I hung my head in shame and watched the little guy waddle past me.

In desperation Jay decided to build a large trap to herd the ducks with. It consisted of two big sticks and 30 feet of plastic mesh. We struggled with this makeshift contraption for nearly an hour. Then the crowd began actively chasing the ducks away from us. I shrugged my shoulders at the kids gathered around the trap and said, 'They're just too quick for us.'�

After all our effort we hadn't caught a single duck. My sense of defeat and humiliation was complete. And to make matters worse, I was making money on the 'ducks captured'� quotient. Meaning my nearly three hours of running around in a living skit from the Keystone Cops had amounted to exactly nothing. A total bust, I hadn't made a dime.

We climbed into the truck and began the long journey back to Jay's house. As we rumbled down the highway towards his home I turned to Jay, who looked as down as I felt, and thoughtfully asked, 'Why don't we just shoot those fuckers?'�

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