HOPKINTON – After fighting to rid their Main Street property of vultures for 4 ½ years, Dan and Sue Cullen say they have lost everything they had and are packing to start fresh in a new community. They are moving to Montana.

Their masonry and chimney company, Chimney Swift, went first. Then they had to sell his equipment and tools, and finally, they lost their home. The Cullens received their 20-day eviction notice Monday.

“Our family had a budget and the vultures didn’t fit in,” Dan Cullen said.

“We bought this [house] as an investment. We wanted to live here forever,” Cullen said.

But in the end, he said, “I had to sell everything, my dump truck, my trailers, my equipment just to keep afloat. [Now] we have to start a whole family all over again.”

They don’t welcome the clichés, like comparing their current situation to a real live Alfred Hitchcock film, or the name calling, many in town refer to them as the “vulture people.”

“We are not the vulture people. We are the Cullens with the vulture problem,” Dan Cullen said.

Up to several hundred black and turkey vultures — the two species most common in the United States — roost on the trees that surround the Cullen’s 145 Main St. home, near the Ashaway Elementary School.

Town officials, working with the Cullens’ mortgage company, said they will start a vulture management program next week with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. The program will target an area within a 1 ½ mile-radius around the Cullens’ house, where the problem is worst, Town Manager William A. DiLibero said.

As part of the program, several trees will be cut down — at the expense of the Cullen’s mortgage company — and local police officers working with APHIS officials will fire pyrotechnics into the trees to disperse the vultures. Wildlife officials will later determine if it’s necessary to kill some birds to reinforce the management program, DiLibero said.

Town officials are securing approval from the Ashaway Fire District because a neighbor raised concerns over pyrotechnics being fired in a residential area with dry vegetation.

Douglas A. Paquette, who lives next door to the Cullens, questioned the effectiveness of the proposed measures, noting USDA studies say well-established roosts may not respond to pyrotechnic devices or other harassment.

Paquette, whose deck is about 15 feet from the Cullen’s property line, is one of the neighbors who is not bothered by the vultures’ presence and has asked town officials to stay away from his property.

Turkey and black vultures are federally protected by the Migratory Bird Act, administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and state law. Federal and state permits are required to trap, kill or relocate the animals.

“Vultures are intelligent and respond quickly when one or two members of a flock are killed,” according to a USDA fact sheet. “Removal of persistent birds from a local population increases efficacy of harassment programs, ensuring that birds remain responsive to these techniques rather than habituating to them.”

Residents are also being urged to contact the local police if they see the vultures setting up new roosts in town.

Turkey vultures — the most numerous in the Ashaway area — are the larger of the two species, with an average weight of four pounds and a wingspan of up to six feet, according to information from the USDA. They are predominantly dark brown or black with a featherless, bright red (adult) or brown (juvenile) head and a relatively long, narrow tail.

Black vultures, which are more common in the South, weigh less than four pounds and have a wingspan of less than five feet. They are predominantly black with a shorter and wider tail than that of the turkey vulture.

Turkey vultures have been reported to live up to 16 years and black vultures up to 25 years. Vulture populations have been increasing nationwide, particularly in the Southeast, though they are increasingly expanding their territory northward.

Because vultures primarily feed on carrion — although black vultures sometimes prey on domestic fowl and livestock — their presence has been welcomed in some areas for their road-kill cleanup services.

“They do an efficient job, and they are probably nature’s best sanitation device,” Paquette said.

The Cullens said the vultures that roost on their property tend to feed on live kill and often discard the remains on their property.

“They eat anything, but they prefer live kill,” Sue Cullen said.

“They took a squirrel right out of our tree,” added Ben York, who lives across the street from the Cullens.

Whenever the vultures feel threatened, the Cullens said, they defecate and vomit on their property, a common defense mechanism for the birds.

Buildups of vulture excrement have been linked to outbreaks of respiratory ailments and other health problems.

Earlier this year, the USDA took samples to test for avian influenza and other diseases, Cullen said. Their children — a 9-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son — as well as their nephew came down with strep throat. Dan Cullen said when they’ve tried to clean up the birds’ excrement, they got diarrhea and become nauseous. They said they are worried that the prolonged exposure could have more severe health effects. Their son has developed asthma, which they attribute to the excrement.

Years of exposure, they said, have also resulted in soil and underground contamination. Their well is located directly beneath one of the roosts and several of the trees around it will be cut down. The Cullens showed a reporter a sample of their well water that had black deposits. A greasy film formed on the surface when the water was boiled.

They have unsuccessfully tried to get a tax abatement for their property. Their home, bought in March 2002 for $152,500, is currently assessed at $282,800, up $79,000 from last year. Their taxes were $3,119.20 for the current year.

“They want us to pay taxes, and yet my kids can’t play in the backyard,” Dan Cullen said.

“We should have thousands of dollars of equity,” he said. “A lot of our neighbors are afraid to say anything because they might not be able to refinance.”

But Paquette, who purchased his house three years ago knowing there was a roost, said the vultures do not curtail any of their outdoor activities. He and his wife, he said, often sit on their deck to watch the birds.

“They are the most graceful birds in the sky,” he said.

DiLibero said town officials would not grant an abatement without proof of the damage and its extent.

“The new tax assessor is not inclined to provide a tax rebate for the problem,” DiLibero said. “We have no documentation that these birds have contaminated the wells. We have no documentation of any of the Cullens’ claims.”

The Cullens say the birds have become territorial, particularly the black vultures. They said the birds have tried to attack Dan Cullen and swooped over Sue Cullen and Ben York.

Last Christmas, Dan Cullen said, he had to arm himself with a paintball gun just to set up Christmas decorations.

Attacks on humans, however, are not common, said Eric Tillman, a wildlife biologist with the National Wildlife Research Center.

“That’s very atypical and very unlikely,” Tillman said last spring, adding he’s never heard of an attack on humans. Scientists at the USDA National Wildlife Research Center in Gainesville, Fla., have been studying vulture-related problems for years. In one case, they determined that a woman nearby had been feeding the birds.

The Cullens say they learned from neighbors that their problem has existed for at least 10 years and that apparently some area residents had been feeding the birds.

Over the years, the Cullens have turned for help from the state Department of Environmental Management and the Department of Health, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Audubon Society.

They’ve tried every management tool on the book: firing pyrotechnics, blowing horns, flying kites and balloons and hanging vultures’ carcasses from the trees. They even tried a last resort method of population management: securing state and federal permits to kill some of the animals. But they encountered opposition from animal activists and had to stop because town regulations prohibit hunting within 500 feet of a residential area.

“They stopped me from harassing them, from cutting trees, and we just suffered every inch of the way,” Dan Cullen said.

“We’ve lost even this. We’ve got no home now. We’ve got no money,” Dan Cullen said Tuesday morning as he pointed out the damage caused by the vultures and the trees that town and federal wildlife service officials have marked to be cut down. “Now, all of a sudden, it’s a big deal.”

“Five years is too long. It’s wiped us out,” added his wife. “We don’t have a penny to our name. It’s all in here.”

DiLibero, who became the town manager last June, said he started working on the issue when he first learned of it. He said action was halted during the summer because “We had to wait until the birds came back to the property before we could do anything.”