On the edge of a global avian influenza wave, New Zealand finds itself in the familiar human position of preparing for a threat that has not yet arrived but whose arrival feels inevitable. Government agencies have begun vaccinating the country's most endangered birds, while ordinary people like a Gisborne backyard keeper weigh the cost of protection against the very way of life they are trying to protect. It is a story as old as agriculture itself: the tension between safety and freedom, between the managed life and the one worth living.