I don't care which you want to call it; when the food ends up on my sidewalk and porch, I will involve the po-po.

The house woke this morning to find that the front of our house had been vandalized. OK, so the police said since the damage isn't permanent it's harassment. I suggested that there's potential damage to the stones on our porch, but we'll have to see how the serious clean-up goes.

Dripped from the front door to the boulevard, on the wood porch, the stone pillars supporting the front stairs, the sidewalk and steps to the street, the plants bordering the sidewalk and steps, and the lawn near those plants, was a selection of oily, sticky, and smelly food. Dill pickles, green olives, what looked like a can of diced tomatoes, some clumpy brown flakes that reminded me of corn meal, chocolate syrup, honey, some kind of salad dressing, and some kind of green foam. The pickles and olives were just strewn about. The tomatoes were plopped in one big splat at the end of the walk. The liquids were spread about with swirly patterns that will surely blend into the concrete, except for the salad dressing which was evenly poured over the porch steps. The cornmeal was flung about as if to represent snow or confetti, except the pile dumped right on the "welcome" mat.

Our front walk is twenty-five feet from the street. We've recently measured when we remodeled and added the porch. That's a long way to dribble and splash and dump food and flakes and sauce.

The green foam threw us over the edge, though. It's a light and fluffy foam. Not any kind of food foam. More like a hair mousse or shaving foam. Shaving foam is what the police and I called it while we were talking. The kind of foam that has a base in alcohol.

There were puffs of it on the porch and streams over the hostas along the sidewalk with fits and starts on the lawn. The bit on the porch gave a tiny bit of bleaching, but since the sprays were small, that'll blend. The plants had some volume on them in stripes, but it's fall, so they'll be dying soon anyway, and they should recover, although they may be unsightly in the meantime. The lawn is fresh this year; the whole thing, brand new sod. We've been fighting the lack of rain and extra heat by letting it grow a little longer; it doesn't need any more aggravation than it gets already.

Most annoying was the stone foam on the stone platforms along the porch steps. Instead of handrails, we've got stone pillars on either side of the steps; I'm sure there's an actual architectural term for them. It's a waist-high rectangle of stone with a stone shelf on the top. On thee, someone had carefully sprayed out some profanity for our pleasure; "bitch" on one and "slut" on the other.

The only cleaning I gave the stone and sidewalks was a good hose-down this morning. The Mrs had picked up the pickles and most of the olives, and wiped down some of the slime from the steps. I gathered the rest of the olives in the trash bag she'd started, pulled the hose around from the back yard, and spent too long power-spraying up what I could of the sticky liquids.

Sure, the foam simply washed away, but since the stones are real stone, and they're outside in the elements, they've got that bit of natural residue and build up on them. Well, now except in the parts that previously had the green foam on it. Someone didn't factor in the bleaching effect of the foam, and now, etched in the natural grime, are the words, still for all to see.

This happened once before. Not quite as bad, as in there wasn't any profanity etched in bleach on anything.

The girl-child is in sports at her high school. Volleyball in the fall and softball in the spring. Last year a few of the girls got together and did this to a few of the houses of a few players and coaches. We're not coaches, just the parents of one of the players. I'd hate to see what the coaches got.

The girls got busted and someone else had threatened raising the stakes to prosecution. About six of them, one in crutches, came with terse letters of apologies and a "we're sorry" speech that they'd apparently had to say enough times that it wasn't fresh. As a response, I'd expressed my understanding that pranks will be played, and while annoyed at the mess, I was really only upset about the mustard marinated sardines they'd poured on my porch; the yellow stain lasted through the winter, and the dogs sniffed where the fish had been for some time. They'd pledged it was meant in fun, realized they were out of line, and promised not to do it again.

Since it was done again, and since my stone is potentially damaged, I called the local police. The Mrs had taken some photos before she started cleaning up, which I copied to a CD for da man, who arrived just as the disk spit out of my PC. We surveyed the damage, which was much cleaner by the time he got there, but the effect was not too diminished. He explained that this would be harassment, not vandalism, because nothing was damaged, just messed up. He said we'd see what happened to the stone to see if we'd upgrade later, but since the stones can be washed, it's still unlikely.

We chatted about the potential reasons someone would want to do this, and I stayed with my assumption of prank gone too far. He suggested perhaps the girl-child was having a bad interaction at school. I had no helpful specific knowledge. We lamented that sometimes kids will call each other horrible things not meaning it, and perhaps that was the motive behind the scribblings. He questioned whether the particular phrases might have other meaning, or perhaps be directed to the wife and not the kid. He took down some vitals, and said he'd provide a copy of his report to the school's liaison officer to see if they'd have a better handle on finding the culprits.

I'm cool with the pranks kids might play. Until they hit the wood and stone, little harm is done. It annoyed everyone and we had to waste some time cleaning up crap that shouldn't be in anyone's front yard. I never partook, but saw plenty of houses who's trees had been strewn with toilet paper. The wife tells of pranksters sticking a box of plastic forks in someone's yard; not just setting the box down, but sticking the forks into the yard like little flowers.

Whatever.

But staining the wood, bleaching the stone, and crossing into not-nice labeling...I hope the po-po makes you cry.