Balinese farmer Wayan Murda clutches his rooster, gently stroking the tame bird. Like many Indonesians, he's heard of bird flu but doesn't know much about the virus.
"I'm not worried about catching it," he said calmly after walking to visit a neighbour in the Balinese village of Lotinduh, a few kilometres (miles) south of the cultural town of Ubud, a favourite of foreign tourists.
In neighbour Made Purna's walled family compound, about a dozen roosters are kept in small cages, while free-range hens and chicks dart in and out of buildings, fresh chicken droppings staining the entrance of a small house.
Bare-foot children and women chat with other family members in the dirt-floored compound. Nearby, flocks of ducks forage in the muddy rice fields for insects.
It is a scene repeated throughout Indonesia, where a majority of the country's 220 million people live in villages or small farms. For most, keeping chickens, ducks and geese is a way of life and allowing the animals to roam freely seems natural.
But as the country's bird flu death toll rises, UN officials are calling on Indonesians to change the way they live with poultry to reduce the risk of catching a virus that has killed nearly 40 people nation-wide since 2005.
Ignorance about the H5N1 bird flu virus and lack of official guidance were also hampering efforts to control the disease, officials and locals say. Indonesia has the second highest human death toll of any nation, with the majority of cases occurring since the beginning of this year.
Villager Made, 35, said sick chickens weren't unusual. In the past, people in the village would eat them. He still doesn't care if his family ate sick chickens. He only cares where the birds came from.
"Only chickens coming from Java can suffer bird flu," he said, referring to neighbouring Java island, where most of Indonesia's human bird flu cases have occurred.
"Ducks affected by bird flu also come from Java," he added. Elsewhere in the village, another resident, Sukerti, said there had been cases of dead chickens earlier this month and pointed to a neighbouring house. Asked what happened, she said no one had dared eat the birds and their carcasses were buried.
"There are no officials coming to check," she added, holding a young child in her arms.
The H5N1 virus is endemic in many of Indonesia's 33 provinces. There have been several outbreaks among birds on the tourist island of Bali but no human infections.
Steven Bjorge, medical officer of communicable diseases at the World Health Organisation office in Jakarta, said sickness in poultry had long been a feature in Indonesians' everyday life, leading to resistance to widespread culling.
"The message is dead and dying chicken are dangerous.
"But (Indonesians) have rebelled at this notion because all their lives and their ancestors'lives, they have been living with the reality of chickens dying. They cannot believe that a few dead and dying chicken are a problem," he told a panel discussion for foreign correspondents in Jakarta on Monday.
He said the virus was something new and different.
"It has become locked in, or endemic in, the backyard environment," he added.
Delima Ashari, head of the bird flu task force at Indonesia's agriculture ministry, saw an end to the disease.
"In 2008, Indonesia will be free from bird flu, Inshallah (God willing)," she said on Elshinta news radio on Tuesday.
But she added: "I realise that the immense size of Indonesia makes it not easy to handle and socialise strategies and change people's behaviour on bird flu handling and how to live healthily with fowls."
Such a change seems unlikely for now in Lotinduh.
Wayan and Made prize their roosters and keep them for clandestine cock-fighting. Each bird is worth between 150,000 and 200,000 rupiah ($16 and $21) and perhaps more for a champion.
Chickens are also valuable sources of meat and eggs, while ducks are used to get rid of pests in rice fields. In Bali, duck meat is also widely used in festivals.
Such is the demand, there are growing concerns about chicken and duck smuggling from Java, leaving Bali vulnerable to more outbreaks of bird flu.
Ducks are largely immune to the H5N1 virus and act as carriers for the disease, justifying fears of more outbreaks and the need to clamp down on smuggling.
Last month, Bali's Udayana University hosted a panel discussion involving agriculture, health and poultry experts that led to calls by participants to improve surveillance and quarantine of birds and people, curb poultry smuggling and improve public education in Bali.
The island attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists a year, and tourism is a major employer. Failure to clamp down on the threat of bird flu could hurt the industry, the panel said.
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