I guess I didn't shake my malware paranoia when I left Windows.. I kept seeing "an update is available for Growl" popping up in the upper right hand corner.. After a few weeks of this I blew it away - certainly looked fishy to me since I had no clue whatsoever where it came from.
That being said, after blowing it away I decided to research a bit and I believe it came with the last firefox update, but I could be wrong. Seems like it's a legitimate program that I may need someday but for now I'm getting along without it.