The man with unwashed flat hair offers no such resistance to these evil birds, especially in spring when they are protecting their young.
Those with a wide experience of television comedy will know instantly the quintessential soft and fluffy hair man is the pavonine Mac from the magnificent and riotously perfect Green Wing.
Wikipedia describes Mac thus- "Dr Mac McCartney, surgeon, probably the most popular member of staff, clever, witty, pretty and, as Sue White says, with hair like a lion's mane. Partial to riding naked on motorbikes." Close personal friends will smile at this, they will nod and admit this is me to a T.
My ideal hair shampoo also has to be dirt cheap, which means I buy either reasonably good stuff on Special, or worthless pond slime prepared after extensive experiments on animals, useful only for oiling doors.
Earlier this year I discovered Elvive by L'Oreal of Paris, partially because the label said it was ideal for damaged or lifeless hair, which is the label I have learned through experience makes my hair soft and fluffy, and partially because New World had reduced it to $3.99.
I was mindful also of that beguiling L'Oreal slogan, Because You're Worth It. I am especially worth $3.99.
But at New World, the good times change every week, and Elvive was soon back to an unreasonable price. Months went by, my hair became thin and uncontained, on the verge in fact of being damaged and lifeless.
The magpies were massing as spring approached, they knew the man they had on their files as SAFE (Soft And Fluffy Everywhere) was without weapons.
They were already preparing the sauce.
I was in Great King St, just down by the cop shop when they made their first cawing swoop. I ran blindly into the first doorway I found, a surplus store where Real Groovy once stood, and raced to the back of the shop, past unsaleable paperbacks, plastic buckets and tape that may have lost its stick.
And it was there I found a huge display of All Blacks hair shampoo, the bottle clearly modelled on the mighty upper torso of Sonny Bill Williams.
What an utterly stupendous thing this was! A 500ml bottle of hair shampoo twice the size of L'Oreal Elvive at one-third the price! Who cares if it was any good? Who cares if it burnt crop circles in my hair with toxins normally used to strip paint?
I might wreck my head, but as Oscar Wilde once said, and I am paraphrasing, when you are saving this much money, what's a wrecked head?But here's the thing - All Blacks Shampoo, a licensed rugby union product, not something made in Kaipoi that fell off the back of a truck, actually bites the mustard.
This shampoo not only makes my hair soft and fluffy, but it also gives my hair definition and shape, and you could never say that about Mac from Green Wing, whose hair runs wild like Santa's beard.
I immediately posted a photo of the bottle on Facebook and announced my hair would be wearing this product at the Gardens Pharmacy Methadone Coffee Club gig that night at the Crown Hotel.
People, including women I can only really describe as concupiscent, ruffled my hair all night and told me it felt fantastic. I have not been so coddled at a rock gig for 30 years. I walked home in mid-air singing the theme song from Hair at the top of my lungs.
I went back to the store the next day and bought six more bottles. Two days later the All Blacks won the World Cup.
Anyone who thinks these events are not inextricably related is, well, there's no other way to say it, just soft in the head.
• Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
