Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story misreported where vultures congregate along Sixth Avenue in Longmont. They gather in an old oak tree in the block between Francis and Grant streets. Also, the story previously misreported the efforts the Aiello family took to scare away the birds. They cracked a whip at the birds and hung effigies in the trees. The story below has been corrected.

When the flocks of turkey vultures migrate to Longmont each spring, they tend to find one or two large trees around town to roost in for the duration of the summer. However, their nasty habits have not exactly endeared them to residents, some of who are demanding something be done.

While the city weighs its options, those being impacted by the birds are losing their patience.

For the past two years the vultures’ home base has been in an old oak tree on Sixth Avenue between Grant and Francis strreets. The massive birds urinate and defecate all over the place, often whitewashing the entire sidewalk and causing significant property damage, including breaking off large branches that crash into cars and homes. As a defense mechanism when they get spooked, they also regurgitate rancid meat they’ve scavenged that day, and the vomit emanates a truly foul stench.

Jodi Halsey-Aiello and Wayne Aiello, who own a home adjacent to the oak tree, have tried to scare off the 80-some vultures that roost there each night throughoutsummer. Aiello cracked his Indiana Jones’ whip at them and hung vulture effigies in the tree, but nothing seemed to work.

“It’s been a total nightmare,” Halsey-Aiello said. “We even considered fixing up our house and moving. It’s that bad.”

Though the property damage and loss of peace and quiet was frustrating, Halsey-Aiello and Aiello finally lost it when last year their 17-year-old daughter contracted a mysterious disease that Halsey is convinced came from the repulsive vultures.

“What’s really scary and odd is that all of her symptoms were similar to exposure to neurotoxins,” Halsey-Aiello said. “She couldn’t walk, her spine was inflamed, her blood pressure dropped, and her glands were extremely swollen. They did hundreds of tests but never figured out what caused it. It didn’t dawn on us to have them test for any sort of neurotoxin or bacteria related to the vultures until we got out of the hospital.”

Most experts on turkey vultures say the high levels of Clostridia and Fusobacteria — two extremely acidic and toxic bacteria found in the stomachs of turkey vultures — kill anything they come in contact with, making the birds’ excrement quite sanitary.

According to the Loudon Wildlife Conservancy in Virginia, vultures prevent the spread of disease by removing large amounts of decaying meat that could potentially contaminate both the air and groundwater.

The conservancy also notes that vulture poop is actually a sanitizer. After stepping in a carcass, vultures will often expel their waste onto their legs, the uric acid from which kills any bacteria they might pick up from the dead animal.

However, there also is evidence that shows excrement from turkey vultures can contain microbes of anthrax.

“I shot half a dozen vultures and took excrement from them for my experiment,” Dr. Luis Schmidt wrote in a 1956 article. “This was heated to 90 degrees centigrade for three minutes so as to destroy all the germs of the disease, but not the spores. Some of this cooked excrement was sown on different types of cultural media. The following day typical colonies of anthrax microbes appeared. With some of this material I inoculated guinea pigs, rabbits, and one sheep. They all died with anthrax.”

Despite these claims, Chana Goussetis, a spokeswoman with the Boulder County Health Department, said staff with the animal borne-disease program had never heard of a person contracting diseases from any kind of vulture, reiterating the fact that the acidic bacteria in the birds’ stomachs are too toxic for anything to survive.

Kendra Cross, a district supervisor for U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services, confirmed Boulder Public Health’s position, but hedged her answer a little bit saying, “there is always the potential for anyone who comes in contact with wildlife to contract a zoonotic disease.”

Though the vultures might not be an imminent public health concern, they can significantly damage property and undermine residents’ quality of life.

In response to the problem, Cross and the USDA submitted a proposal to Longmont to humanely relocate the birds out of the city.

“I’ve had to do this before in Virginia and Maryland and we’ve been very successful,” Cross said. “We can have success in five to seven days.”

In short, the plan is to make the birds as uncomfortable as possible by hanging dead turkey vultures in the trees as well as firing pyrotechnics and shining high-powered lasers at the birds as they attempt to roost for the night.

“You don’t want to take a piecemeal approach,” Cross said. “These birds will habituate to one nuisance very, very quickly, but this multi-faceted approach is pretty effective.”

When the birds go find another tree to roost in, the process is repeated until the flock finds a suitable home outside of town.

In order for the USDA to begin the process, however, it will cost the city roughly $13,000. Dan Wolford, the land program administrator for Longmont Public Works and Natural Resources, said the city attorney is reviewing the proposal. If approved by the town council, Cross said they could begin quickly.