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Vultures Are Taking Over One Delaware Neighborhood

FELTON, Del. (CBS) --  This isn't a life-like Halloween decoration turning it's bald red head side-to-side. It's the real thing. Vultures are perching all over homes in Felton, Delaware's Chimney Hill neighborhood.

"Ohhh are they ugly and got a funny little walk and they nasty," says Felton resident Barbara Bond.

Bond says from the moment she wakes, it's vulture city around her home.

"Early in the morning they're walking around and you think it's little kids up there playing. Boom, boom, boom," she says.

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Not only is it a nuisance, the birds are causing serious property damage. They claw at the shingles and the powerful digestive acids that allow them to eat rotten animals - also disintegrate asphalt.

Over the last 2 years the problem has only gotten worse.

Neighbors don't know where the vultures come from but they appear to roost in the nearby woods and invade chimney hill during the day.

"I've counted 40 or 50 birds just on 2 or 3 roofs," says Felton resident Jim Sullivan.

Bryan: "Perhaps the only thing nastier than seeing vultures on your roof and the damage that they do to shingles is what you find at the bottom of your rain spout after a storm . That hair right there - yep, that's regurgitated vulture food"

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"You'll have like big hair balls that will come off your roof and fall down on your deck," Sullivan says.

Vultures are federally protected migratory birds so you can't kill or harm them.

All you can try to do is scare them. Bonds uses a device with a high-pitched ping, but it doesn't really work.

The community association is coordinating with the Felton fire company and State Senator Dave Lawson to try scaring the buzzards after they roost for the evening in the nearby woods.

They circulated a flyer telling people to bring pots and pans, horns and other noise makers.

"They just seem like this is their home now and when they come here in the morning they're here to stay," Sullivan says.

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