TURKEY: Dressed in a white plastic suit and armed with a large sack, Hassan Aytac entered the compound and made straight for the chicken coop. Luke Harding reports from Dogubaya
From inside there came squawking. He opened the door. There was an explosion of feathers as chickens charged out into the snow-covered courtyard and ran for their lives.
"It's a bit like a game of rugby," said Mr Aytac, dashing after a white hen that had made a bid for freedom. "They can run away. But we always get them in the end."
Several small children joined in, chasing a recalcitrant chicken off the roof of a dun-coloured outbuilding. After five minutes, the job was done.
"It's very hard work," said Mr Aytac, tying up a wriggling sack of birds as his colleague hosed down the coop with disinfectant. "It's very cold. And sometimes the hens run away."
Mr Aytac (24) is one of 40 workers rounding up the chicken population of Dogubayazit, the remote Kurdish town in eastern Turkey where three of his cousins - Mehmet Ali Kocyigit (14), Fatma (15) and Hulya (11) - died of the lethal H5N1 strain of bird flu last week, the first confirmed cases of the disease outside south-east Asia.
The disease now appears to be heading westwards, with 15 cases of H5N1 across the country, including in Ankara, 600 miles away, and as many as 38 people being treated for bird flu-like symptoms in hospital. Yesterday Turkish officials called for calm. None of the 15 confirmed cases were critical, said a health official.
But, inevitably, many fear that Europe could be bird flu's next destination. The migratory birds that brought the disease to Dogubayazit, a mountainous truckstop next to Mount Ararat, the legendary resting place of Noah's Ark, and the Iranian border, have already left.
"I found a dead pigeon in my garden a couple of weeks ago. I chucked it in the rubbish bin," said Sefika Kizildag.
"Four days ago there was a chicken dead in my coop. In the morning he was fine, then he died. Now my daughter is ill. I took her to the doctor. But he didn't see her. So she came home again."
Medical facilities in the town are poor. When Turkey's health minister turned up on Monday, an angry crowd heckled him. It had taken him a week to get there. Local people accuse the government of trying to conceal the problem in birds late last year.
They say official efforts to stop the spread of the disease have been inadequate and too late.
"I don't think killing chickens is going to make much difference now," said Mustafa Dincer, as his daughter handed over two ducks to be slaughtered. "It's not going to solve the problem. They kill all the chickens. But they also have to kill all the birds that have flown away."
After nine days, Mr Aytac and his colleagues have killed some 21,000 birds, a fraction of the poultry still roaming eastern Anatolia. The resources at their disposal are a battered green Toyota van, disinfectant and a lot of sacks that are filled with birds which end up buried alive in a large pit on the outskirts of town. Each householder will be compensated.
Officially, the cull is supposed to be over soon, but a five-minute drive from the agriculture ministry, where the campaign is being co-ordinated, the birds abound. Yet poor locals, who were yesterday celebrating the Muslim Bayram festival and handing out sweets to their neighbours, have overcome their reluctance to part with their poultry if it means their families stay healthy.
There was scepticism yesterday that the cull would make much difference.