The vultures were circling a North Carolina church -- literally -- prompting members to commission a vulture effigy to scare the real birds away.

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The strange tactic worked and the birds, which had been destroying the Bethlehem Baptist Church roof, now roost and eat elsewhere, The Daily News of Jacksonville, N.C. said Saturday.

"They were actually breaking pieces off the roof and eating it," church secretary Susie McBarn said. "That couldn't have been good for them."

The effigy, prepared by a taxidermist and installed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, hangs upside down from the church's steeple.