Airborne terrorists are attacking our way of life. However, rest assured, we will not waver from our conviction.

This correspondent arrived home after a hard day's slog last week to discover to our horror that our hovel was under siege. Parrots, it has since been suggested rainbow parrots although we wouldn't know as we're no expert on the matter, but they were indeed parrots, were dive bombing our revered mango tree.

Now, the mango tree and this correspondent have gone through 21 summers together. We've had good seasons and lean, such is the nature of these things.

However this year looks like being a bumper crop. The tree's branches are groaning under the weight of rapidly ripening fruit.

Now, the thing is, we don't like mangoes, so we usually give them away. This makes up particularly popular in mango season, which is a nice change.

"Buy you a beer,'' punters say as we make our way to our local hostelry.

"You're looking fit. Oh, and how are the mangoes going?''

So this year we were looking forward to riding a record wave of mango inspired popularity. Or we were until the predatory parrots arrived.

We've never had a problem with parrots in the past. Why, one of the highlights of our youth was watching the dead parrot sketch on Monty Python.

But rest assured, parrots are now Public Enemy Number 1 on Struggle Street.

Thing is, how do we counter them? It has been suggested we buy a cat but we fear that's a bit extreme. After this war has been won we don't really want to be charged with crimes against humanity, or bird life as this case my be, by the RSPCA or PETA or one of those groups.

So a cat's out of the equation. But what other measures are open to us?

For rest assured, these parrots have no fear. We tried scaring the things away but to no avail. One guerilla parrot looked at us, laughed, then tore another chunk out of the fruit it was stealing.

We will admit that at the moment we're losing the war. But we're not giving up. Not by a long way. Things looked dark in the early days of WW II but eventually the goodies got up. What we need is a battle plan.

We must speak to experts in anti-parrotism, if such a word exists, which it possibly doesn't. We need to get inside the mind of these infidels.

However, we're concerned we could be fighting a war on two fronts very soon. We were discussing the pirating parrot problem to a mango aficionado just last weekend.

"You shouldn't be too worried about parrots,'' she warned.

"Flying foxes from Wingham will come of a night and cause the real devastation.''

Flying foxes...Wingham... night. This is more dire than we initially thought.

We've come to the conclusion that 24 hour surveillance is the only hope we have to salvage our mango crop from the marauding parrots and fiendish flying foxes. We shall first read Sun Tsu Full's The Art of War to get some tips. We'll establish battlements around Struggle Street armed with the latest in counter parrot and flying fox equipment. This could be long and brutal.

However, we're determined to win, to ensure there's mangoes for all in a few short weeks. We shall overcome.