Vultures have a well-deserved reputation for eating dead things. It's what they do.

But were you aware that some vultures opt for things that are ever-so-slightly less than dead?

Well, they do. Sometimes they go for live cows and start eating them while they're still alive. And now the state of Indiana has given its farmers conditional permission to wage guerrilla warfare against these sadistic demon-birds:

Seemingly every day when John Hardin walks out his door, he sees them. They often are perched on the roof ridge of his neighbor's barn or settled on a nearby fence post — watching, waiting...

Hardin is among a growing list of farmers, particularly in southern Indiana, who are dealing with what many describe as a reign of terror brought on by black vultures. These birds, however, are protected under an international law that regulates the hunting of migratory birds. That fact has left livestock producers across the state with a limited set of tools for how to address these birds, and with varying levels of success.

But the Indiana Farm Bureau is trying to give them another option. In early August, the general farming organization launched a new program in which livestock producers can apply for a permit to legally kill and remove a set number of the black vultures from their property.

It seems only fair that the "set number" of birds that farmers be permitted to kill should be, you know, "all of them."

Because these sound like the type of creatures that aren't going to go quietly into the night once the guns come out.

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P.S. - You know what's more terrifying than a wake of vultures? Bigfoot in a tutu. Watch this amazingly epic parenting fail at a kid's b-day party: