Last Friday I was heading home from the Horse Brass, doing my typical post-bar thing. Head up Burnside, spend twenty minutes waiting for a burrito at Taco Bell, watch a few drunken PSU business majors scream at each other and finally set sail for home via SW Vista. The drive over the hill and the descent down to Beaverton-Hillsdale is usually pretty boring, especially since this long stretch has become a speed trap a recent years. So it's 10 minutes of tedious winding curves and empty streets.

But as I reached the crest at the intersection of Dosch and Patton, a black Lexus SUV was waiting. The headlights were off and it looked like it had been waiting there for a while.

For someone to come along in the dead of night.

Waiting for a schmuck.

A schmuck like me.

I pulled up to the stop sign, knowing I was in for trouble and their headlights went up. The driver made a quick right turn. The next thing I knew, a white object the size of a football was flying at my head. It popped and suddenly a gallon of mysterious goo began dripping down the passenger-side of the windshield.

So I sat there for a minute, thinking to myself, "What a bunch of assholes. Why didn't they wait for someone to drive by in a nice, freshly waxed car?" That's what I would have done but maybe they'd been sitting there for a half hour and finally grew tired of waiting. Who knows. The least they could have done is taken a tip from Stavros Niarchos and hand offered me a hundred bucks.

So that was all well and good. I was the butt of some dumb rich kid's prank just like Jello Biafra all those years ago in this same general area. I figured the glop would wash away in the rain overnight and that would be that. No such luck. By morning the goo was drying into a hard shell. Without a graden hose at my disposal, I drove down to my friendly, neighborhood car wash. Five bucks and a quick spin through would surely get this mess out of my life.

Or so I thought.

Three blocks later, more goo began dripping down the windshield. Where had it been? Why hadn't the car wash's mechanical doohikies exorcised it for all time? Was this glop super-intelligent? Did it hide in a crack over the glass or vanish to another universe and back again?

Too lazy and too cheap to drive back to the car-wash, I resigned myself to being the owner of a car covered in mysterious glop quite capable of teleportation. There's no way I would ever bid rid of it but maybe it would grow a mouth and tell me the secrets of the universe. Or at least attract squirrels that would lick the glop off for good.

But instead of all that this week's pounding rainstorms have all but washed it away. Now only question remains. What was this #$%@#! stuff?

I initially thought it was a water balloon full of leftover Thanksgiving mashed potatoes but the substance was far too runny. I know what you're thinking but it wasn't that either. Whatever this glop was, it had chives in it and unless these pranksters were truly twisted, the source had to be something food-related. It finally dawned on me a day or so later. My car had been hit with a...

...GRAVY BOMB!

So if you head up into the West Hills after a night of bar-hopping this holiday season, be forewarned. That SUV full of brats may still be up there.

Waiting at that stop sign.

Waiting for you...

...with a bucket full of gravy-filled water balloons...

...or pureed turkey...

...or mashed-up pumpkin pie...

...and souls chock full of fatty, leftover evil.

BEWARE! BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEWARE!!!!