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Since I was a child, I’ve loved ratting and rabbiting. That’s when you use ferrets and dogs to hunt out rats and rabbits that are causing a nuisance. But I never thought I’d turn my lifelong hobby into a career. 

When I was 50, I sold my manufacturing business and decided to retire. But I was bored. That’s when I found pest control.

I sorted out the rats and rabbits on a nearby farm as a hobby. One day, the farmer’s brother asked me to deal with the rats and rabbits on his farm. I went that same day and killed around 40 rats. Within a couple of weeks, I was doing six different farms. 

Then someone said: “We have a wasp nest – can you deal with wasps?” I didn’t know anything about wasps, but I used to keep bees so I already had a bee suit. I went online, did some reading, bought the things I needed and did the job. I thought, “I better get on a course and get some insurance.” That was 15 years ago and I’ve been busy ever since. 

I work with my daughter and my team of animals: a spaniel that I’ve trained to be a bedbug dog, called Bugsy, two hawks – Serendipity and Storm, one terrier, three lurchers and a dozen ferrets. We handle bedbugs and fleas, mice and rats, moles, rabbits, birds in the rafters and wasps. 

With pest control, you can work as much as or as little as you want. I am inundated. I often work seven days a week.

The starting salary for a pest controller would be around £26,000 rising to £31,000. I own my own company and I’ve been going for years so I make more than that, but I don’t want to say how much. 

Our bedbug jobs are probably the most expensive because we have to visit a home at least three times because of the variety of processes we use.

The cost depends on the size of the house – you have to treat the whole house, you can’t do just one room and expect a good result.

A three-bedroom house treatment would cost between £500 and £700. The jobs don’t have fixed prices, we always give a quote.

We wouldn’t charge the same for a garden with a couple of rabbits compared to a farm with several warrens.

If you put the work in, you can make a good living doing pest control. I live a comfortable life. I work silly hours but I don’t see it as work.

When I get my dog out of the van to see where the rat is, I’m getting paid for training my dog. 

My wife says: “Look, the kids have all grown up, we’ve got no mortgage, there’s no need for you to be working seven days a week.” But sometimes, I can’t help it. If I get a call from a woman who’s got bedbugs and she’s distraught, I can’t say: “Oh well, it’s Friday afternoon at 5 o’clock, you’ll have to wait until Monday.” 

One woman called me crying because she had mice. 

She said: “I don’t know what to do. I’ve got three children and when we go to bed at night, the mice are running over the kids as they sleep. My landlord won’t do anything.”

Her landlord had just sent her two little wooden mouse traps. That was all the help and assistance he was going to offer her. You’re never going to sort out an infestation like that with two mouse traps. 

I did the job for her. We must have killed a couple of hundred mice. Her partner had left her, she was in a damp basement flat, she had hardly any money and these mice had pushed her to breaking point. I told her she could pay me in instalments whenever she had the money and she burst out crying.

Having a pest problem has a big impact on people’s mental health. For older people especially, bedbugs are devastating. They see it as a stigma, but it’s got nothing to do with how clean you are.

If you sit in a doctor’s or dentist’s surgery, or on a train, and someone who has bedbugs has sat there before you and a couple of the bugs have fallen off – well, those females lay two eggs a day so you’ll soon have a problem. 

But people still see it as a shameful thing. One client’s wife was furious that I parked my van outside the house – she didn’t want her neighbours to know she had bedbugs. 

The best part of my work is when you can sort out a problem for a client that has been causing them anguish. You also never stop learning; every day is a school day. I take courses with the British Pest Control Association and they keep me up to date on changes in legislation around pests, atmospheric conditions, differences in species, breeding cycles. 

I took a residential course they offered and it was electrifying. The teacher covered everything from rats to rabbits and I learnt more in a week than I did doing my own research for 10 years. 

The hardest part of the job is dealing with hoarders. Sometimes I go to a house and I have to tell them that they need to clean the place up, get some skips in and get rid of all the rubbish before I can help. That’s difficult because hoarders have mental issues. 

I went into one woman’s house and she had newspapers in piles stacked up next to the door. The rats were nesting in the newspapers. There were nests everywhere. We killed 12 rats in the kitchen. 

I’ve also been called out by people who have a mental health condition where they are convinced there are insects biting them. I have to diplomatically tell them that I’ve done a full survey of their home and they haven’t got any bugs. Often they don’t believe you. 

One client told me, “Just spray the bloody place.” But I can’t spray it if I don’t see any pests. She started crying and said I didn’t believe her. Those are the hardest jobs. 

I only kill as a last resort. I always try to think of a way of getting rid of the pests without killing them. I was called by someone who thought there were rats in their loft. It was actually a bird’s nest full of chicks. They told me to get rid of it and I explained that there are laws protecting chicks – and rightly so. 

Instead, once their breeding season has ended, when the chicks have flown, I’ll go into the loft and prevent them from coming back next year.

The art of pest control is trying to find a solution where you’re not laying down any chemicals in the environment, and you’re not killing anything but you are doing what you got paid to do – eliminating the problem. 

The secret is consistency and persistence. A pest’s tenacity and inclination to breed is a lot greater than ours because their lifespan is so much shorter. If they can’t bring up their young in a safe environment, they’ll move to where they can.

If you mess about with their food supply, cut off their water supply, start putting pressure on them with dogs, ferrets or birds, they’ll move elsewhere.

I have been helping a school with pigeons in the rafters. Week in, week out, I turn up with Serendipity, my hawk, and I fly her by the pigeons in that school. The pigeons know they can’t bring up their young safely, so they’ve moved. We didn’t kill one pigeon, but we got rid of all the birds.

Sometimes I do have to kill pests, but I’ve never killed something for the sake of killing it. 

I feel blessed because the last job and business of my career has been my lifelong hobby. Every morning, when I get out of bed, I’m getting paid to do my hobby. You can’t ask for more than that. 

My accountant asked if I was going to retire next year. 

“No,” I said. “Why would I? What would I do if I finished?” 

“You can train your dogs. You can go rabbiting. You can go ratting,” he said. 

“Well I’m doing all of that now and getting paid for it,” I said. “As my accountant, are you advising me to do it for nothing?” 

He laughed and said, “Point taken.”

As long as I’m fit and able, I’ve got no wish to retire whatsoever. It’s a way of life. Some mornings I get up and I’m on the golf course with my ferrets and my dogs chasing rabbits when I see the most amazing sunrise. I think to myself: “I’m getting paid for this!”

As told to Isolde Walters

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