Animated Vulture
I can't tell you how much the children were attracted to "Victor". They would just stand there watching the finger go up and down. Brother Lucian wanted a vulture to pick flesh off the body parts in the Manor's "boneyard". I surfed the web and found some nice props but we came up with this idea and he decided to build one. 
This is an animated duck lawn ornament I found at Big Lots for $9.99. It moves its head left to right to look like its waddling and has colored lights all over it. The first thing Brother Lucian did was remove all of the lights. This is the bare frame and motor before he repositioned it to make the head move up and down. You will need welding skills to accomplish this. (We have a welding kit in our monster shop.)
He burned off the frame and removed the duck's feet, head & neck, and the motor. The finished vulture will only have one foot to hold it up. The challenge was to position the motor so it could move the head up and down. This required changing the linkage as well.
Vulture's heads are positioned lower on their bodies than duck's heads, So "Off with her head!"
He turned the body up-side-down too so that the original duck's belly is now the vulture's humpback.

As you can see in the lower photo, he modified a plastic paint stir with the holes already in it to create an extension for the new linkage making it long enough to reach from the motor to the neck and screwed it into place.
reposition head
new linkage
He then covered the frame in black felt (for the body) and white felt (for the neck & head). He hot glued feathers onto the felt over the entire body. We bought the feathers at AC Moore. We also found some brown "animal eyes" in the sidewalk sale bins at AC Moore. It actually looks pretty good when its plugged in. He moves his head up and down slowly. He used a piece of rubber "blood" and attached it to his beak and conected it to a severed finger in the boneyard. The finger lifts up and down when the neck moves. Cool.
- Horrorencia