Vandals pelt Raleigh cars with cheese. Neighbors feta up with de-brie left behind.
The vandals strike at night, fleeing quickly, carrying an arsenal of weapons that is both formidable and delicious.
The cheese marauders, the scourge of Raleigh drivers.
In the past two weeks, at least four cars have been attacked by assailants throwing wads, balls or slices of cheese — particularly Babybel minis.
In the neighborhood around Canterbury Road and Churchill Drive, the cheese barrage has drawn more than 200 social media posts on Nextdoor.com — the online bulletin board for street-level concerns.
“My husband was hit Monday evening by one of those cheese blobs,” one neighbor complained. “We have the evidence ... more the consistency of string cheese, which per ounce is certainly expensive. Whatever the substance, it’s a forceful hit that sticks.”
Nearby, Chris Busch said his neighbors view the trend as both a precaution and a chance for hilarity.
“If you hit my car, I’d chase the little vandal to the end of the Earth,” he said Tuesday. “I’m certainly avoiding Canterbury like that plague — literally. But you have to admit some of the posts are funny. One person asked if they could throw in some ham and deli bread so they could make a sandwich.”
Cheese throwing emerged as a social media phenomenon mostly last year, fueled by quick video posts on TikTok under the hashtag #cheesethrowchallenge.
Originally, these posts featured new parents tossing square slices at their children rather than ask them to “Say cheese.” As this trend emerged, The Washington Post wrote a story headlined, “Humanity is Doomed.”
From babies, the cheese-pointers gravitated to cats.
And as a final step, teenagers began lobbing slices at cars, often out side windows while waiting at traffic signals. This escalation in dairy violence gained national attention in January when the Carrollton Police Department in suburban Dallas tweeted about it.
Turns out, the officers noted, cheese makes excellent fingerprints.
The Raleigh neighborhood remains mixed on whether police or parents should crack down. So far, neither Raleigh nor Durham police say they have cheese-related incidents to report.
But the problem seems isolated to certain Inside-the-Beltline neighborhoods, and many stress that the vandalism may be addressed with more attentive parenting.
Still, some note that it wouldn’t take a direct hit for a passing driver to lash out in the hair-trigger environment the COVID-19 pandemic has created. Plus, foodstuffs can be more than a slight nuisance.
“This is potentially damaging and expensive,” Busch wrote, “if you’ve seen the damage an egg can do to a car.”
For the fearful drivers, there remains the search for a Gouda solution, a cheddar idea, some way to make some sense emmental.