Toehold - Er - Talonhold

Brooklyn, New York. Once the home of the Dodgers, has fallen victim to the latest invasion from the Animal Uprising™. Brooklynites have weathered many problems through the years (a former college acquaintance among them, but that's another story), but his one may be too much for them.

Parrots are taking over the joint.

They are the wild parrots of Brooklyn, these emerald-feathered yakkers with the wisenheimer sense of humor. Thought to be long-ago escapees from a container at John F. Kennedy International Airport, their ranks replenished by unauthorized releases from pet shops, the parakeets — originally from Argentina — have become accomplished city dwellers. There is a parrot colony along the Hudson River cliffs in New Jersey and another bunch that prefers Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx. Of late, two arrivistes have taken up residency on an apartment ledge on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

But mostly these are Brooklyn parrots, content in their adopted borough of 2.5 million people.

"They are successful Brooklynites, in that they are adaptable, eat a wide variety of foods and like to talk," says Eleanor Miele, a professor at Brooklyn College who lives in the Park Slope neighborhood and has found herself entranced by the parrots.

New York has many wild critters, and a few are not human. A coyote wandered into Central Park before running afoul of sunbathers, and the hawks Pale Male and Lola established aeries on a gilded stretch of Fifth Avenue. Raccoons know their way around Brooklyn's Prospect Park, and muskrats poke at the mud flats of the Harlem River.

But the parrots — which are about a foot long and are known as monk parakeets because their gray chests and tufts resemble a monk's skullcap and frock — are among the city's more cacophonous and unexpected residents. Their cry sounds like metal scraping metal. (San Francisco has parrots-in-residence on Telegraph Hill. And Chicago has a broad-shouldered, loud-squawking crew that has been called "Hells Angels with wings.")

They are taking over all of Brooklyn, one cemetery at a time. And what is worse, they are building condos!

Most Brooklyn parrots live in colonies of 50 or 60 birds, although a few less sociable types live on Coney Island or in Canarsie or Gravesend. They favor homes atop light and transmission poles; at Green-Wood Cemetery they inhabit the soaring gothic spires near the gate. Their nests are vast 400-pound constructs, with foyers and anterooms and a space where the females lay eggs and enjoy a respite from the males.

Con Edison knows these nests well, as periodically the power company's workers clamber around them. "These aren't nests; they're condominiums," a spokesman said.

The next thing you know, they'll be moving to Manhattan and taking over Wall Street, There they will get on the phones and pump stocks to unsuspecting consumers all across America.

Oh. My. God. They are already there. We're doomed. (Info on parrots here.)