TIMISOARA, Romania -- Krsta Nicolin is having serious trouble saving the chickens on his small farm, but it has nothing to do with the avian flu.

His flock has dwindled from 10 to six in a month's time, and he blames either a rat or a fox.

"Probably the rat," he said.

There is another problem: Mr. Nicolin's only rooster has become the neighborhood stud.

Seems many on his block are asking to borrow the rooster to bolster their own flocks, and that bird finally is wearing down.

"He really is quite a rooster," Mr. Nicolin said, fairly beaming. "But I think I'm going to keep him home for a while."

And the avian flu? The deadly H5N1 virus that has killed birds and people and raised fears of a global pandemic?

"We don't even think about that," Mr. Nicolin said. "We've never had a problem here. Never. And we don't have one now."

That viewpoint apparently is widely held in this nation of 22 million, long dubbed the breadbasket of Europe, where agriculture accounts for nearly 40 percent of the economy. This is despite Romania becoming one of the latest to report the presence of H5N1.

A month ago at the delta of the Danube River in the nation's southeast, Romanian authorities quarantined the entire village of Ceamurlia de Jos after the discovery of H5N1 in chickens, ducks and geese. All 48,000 farm birds in the region were killed and burned, all roads were blockaded by police for 21 days of quarantine, and all who had been inside were ordered to walk through a pit of disinfectant before leaving.

One elderly man, according to reports, tried to sneak a live chicken under his jacket through the checkpoint, but it flew out as he stepped in the liquid.

No other infections have been reported from that outbreak, and Joseph Domenech, chief veterinarian at the United Nations Food and Agriculture organization, last week praised Romania for having a "good response." But the problem as a whole, unquestionably, is not dissipating.

The H5N1 bird flu strain, which incubated for eight years in China, has morphed into a traveling killer this year. Carried by migratory birds and spread from bird to bird through droppings or respiratory secretions, the strain has touched 16 nations, infected 121 people and killed 62, most in Asia, according to the World Health Organization.

In Europe, H5N1 made its debut over the past two months in the eastern nations of Romania, Croatia, Greece, Turkey and Macedonia, plus in one parrot found in England after it was imported from South America.

There have been no cases in the Western Hemisphere, but U.S. officials are treating the threat seriously enough to have readied a $7.1 billion plan to fight it.

It is much less clear how seriously Romania and other front-line countries are treating it.

When the quarantine at Ceamurlia de Jos made international news, it also was the dominant topic in the country. TV and newspaper accounts offered great play and detail, including stark images of chickens being destroyed. Romania President Traian Basescu advised calm in a national address by telling citizens that chicken is his favorite meal and his wife will continue to cook it for him.

"I eat poultry or eggs every day," Mr. Basescu said in his speech, "but prepared according to the right precautions."

Despite the warning, business has been damaged. The European Union continues to enforce an embargo on all poultry exports from Romania. Domestic sales were halved immediately after the outbreak. Hotels in the Ceamurlia de Jos area are at 98 percent vacancy, absent the hunters from across Europe who stalk migratory birds.

But the trends have begun to reverse quickly.

In Timisoara, a bustling, gritty city of 400,000 that is the nation's most prominent in its western half, supermarket lines for chicken and eggs are back to being typically long. Restaurants that specialize in poultry menus also are filled with customers. After an initial rush, fewer than 2 million citizens have received flu vaccines, no more than usual in advance of winter.

Ioan Tibru, professor of hygiene and health management at the Banat University of Agricultural Science in Timisoara, expressed no surprise at that.

"There is no reason for people to be scared," he said. "There is no trace of this virus in our part of the country, and the one outbreak we had is over."

Mr. Tibru, an influential member of the region's agriculture community who attended a convention two weeks ago with other Europeans in his specialty, said he and others in the country's educational elite are skeptical about why the outbreak of H5NI in Ceamurlia de Jos was publicized heavily by the government.

He cited two "suspicions": One was that Romania could fortify its lobbying for entry into the European Union by displaying it could handle H5N1 as smoothly as some of the continent's more economically advanced countries. The other was that Romania, which recently joined NATO, could do a favor to its new ally, the United States, by boosting sales of American poultry.

No evidence has been presented to back either notion, and none is likely, particularly given that British inspectors from the World Organization for Animal Health made the diagnosis at Ceamurlia de Jos and performed all subsequent laboratory tests.

But the credibility being lent to such speculation underscores that Romania's government and citizens might be more likely to dismiss H5N1 than to brace for it.

There are other signs, too:

The Romanian government has said it will increase and intensify its inspections of farms, but Stadoia Todorov, a farmer with 120 chickens just outside Timisoara, reported one visit in the past year, none since the outbreak. Other European nations are checking poultry monthly.

The government recently instituted a compensation plan for farmers whose livestock are destroyed, an attempt to encourage honest and prompt reporting of ailing birds. But, unlike the U.S. system that is dominated by mass-scale producers such as Tyson and Perdue, Romania remains reliant on small farms. The poor farmer is far less likely to understand why he should give up everything he owns.

The avian flu issue will not go away, experts say, especially in places such as Romania that are part of the region's migratory flyway and, thus, will be in the annual path of the virus' prime carriers for years.

"This is not a temporary problem, but that is how people here see it," Teodora Draganescu, an auditor for the local branch of Price Waterhouse Coopers, said.