As residents of the southernmost strip of England, whether we love seagulls or loathe them, we have no choice other than to share our living space with them.

They were here long before we were, and probably will be long after global warming has turned the South Downs into a marine island.

I love the sound the gulls make and their graceful flight. They are majestic birds who remind me why I chose to live by the sea. But this turns to pure loathing as, with extraordinary accuracy and timing, they target and bomb my car within hours of its latest bath.

The experience of poor Grace Amos in Seaford was extreme and unusual.

For Opinion correspondents to suggest that spearing an 86-year-old was just "seagulls doing what seagulls do" is so obviously not true.

I doubt Grace was directly threatening to this bird's young - or were her attempts to scale her roof, perhaps to repoint her chimney, unreported? I think not.

If it were normal practice, surely The Argus would never be without similar tales of woe and the coastal strip we live on endlessly policed by anti-seagull vigilante mobs wielding weapons of seagull destruction.

It appears to me this particular gull was more than a few sardines short of a tin in its overreaction.

The decision to remove it was correct. The means of removal was, in my mind, the most appropriate. Relocation (suggested by some), unless accompanied by an extended programme of psychotherapy, would have given no guarantee of a "hole in the head free zone" to the owner of the next roof on which it nested.

Sorry, folks, but we shall have to carry on with our "love them and loathe them" attitude but have to continue to live with them (barring the odd exception). It's either that or move north (but not next to a landfill site).

-Mike Burgess, Church Hill, Newhaven