Editor's note: Clay Thompson is out until Sunday, so we rummaged through the archives for a column that resonated with many readers. This column, edited for length, was published on Nov. 21, 2005.

Today's question:

My neighbor claims that several years ago, a vandal was shooting at a saguaro and it fell over and crushed him. Did this really happen, or is he pulling a new Arizonan's leg?

Regrettably, this is a true story.

It happened in 1982 in the desert near Lake Pleasant. Two young men, David Grundman and James Suchochi, were wandering around the desert with guns and took it in their heads to start shooting at saguaros.

Grundman first blasted at a 10-foot saguaro with a shotgun so many times that it toppled. He supposedly said, "The first one was easy."

He then took aim at a 27-foot saguaro and blasted it twice from about 10 feet away. The second shot broke off a large, heavy, spiny arm of the cactus, which fell on Grundman, crushing him to death.

So, the killer cactus story is not an urban legend. However, the jet-car-in-the-cliff story is.

Have you heard this one?

The story is that sometime in the early 1960s (or 1970s) a young man whose father dealt in military surplus came into possession of two jet-assisted take-off units, which are kind of like rockets that help really big, heavy planes take off.

This guy bolted these things to a Chevrolet Impala and took it out to a lonely stretch of pavement in the desert.

Supposedly, days later, Arizona Highway Patrol officers found the wreckage impaled in a cliff side. Investigators estimated the rocket car was going 300 mph when the driver lost control and hit the cliff.

Of course, there isn't a shred of truth to this, but it's still a pretty good story, don't you think?