Ant another thing . . .

Some of you may be aware that once, in days of innocence and honest living, I was a pest controller, which is one of those jobs that no-one wants to do but everyone wants to hear about.

I loved it.

So far, we've covered 'roaches, rats and Bonzo, as well as more rats and thermos flasks, but today, allow me to relate a tale of hymenopteran struggle, of the war between human technology and insectoid foe, indomitable creatures of the swarm versus a man in a Ford van. Today, it is the turn of . . .

The Ants!

Sit back dear friends, unless you can't see your monitor so well, in which case sit forward a bit. Not that far forward. You're too close now. Back a bit. A little more. Tilt the screen a bit, out of the sun. Yeah, like that. Now sit in that exact position, and I shall type you a tale.

Jeremy was a boarding student at a college for people with mental health problems. He was about the same age as me, and his psychological make up included having to deal with autism, learning difficulties and a shoddy memory. He was very interested in people, and would bombard the visiting contractor with questions, finally culminating in his succinct interpretation of your place in the universe.

To me, after half an hour of relentless interrogation whilst I worked my way through the entire site checking rodent monitoring boxes, insect execution machines and almost completely pointless wasp traps, he nodded sagely and concluded "God made you with big hands."

I took it as the compliment I think it was meant to be, and the questions moved on to another topic. That of my job.

Jeremy decided he liked it and immediately promoted himself to Assistant On-Site Pest Control Technician, which involved following me around the college site, taking great interest in the equipment, asking lots (and lots, and lots) of questions before completely failing to store many of the answers in his slightly faulty memory. Still, he was enjoyable company and I would let him carry the more innocuous of my equipment after discovering from his Mum that he had a penchant for eating new things.

Eating your stock isn't necessarily a hindrance to the modern professional, if you're a baker or prostitute maybe, but not great for a mammalian pest controller carrying stuff designed to kill mammals.

One Summer, back in '95 I think, the college became a recruiting ground for ants. Ooh, black as the ace of spades they were. Ruthless, cunning, and utterly intent on achieving their own aims and objectives. In desperation (and perhaps because their contract included ant treatments) the staff at the college put the call out, and I arrived, tooled up, bag in hand and sprayer on back, to have a ganzy.

They were everywhere.

A combination of weather, poor hygiene and  presumably some sort of tactical genius Ant general had allowed them to inundate the kitchens, the common rooms, the dormitories and patio areas. Jeremy appeared, utterly excited and overjoyed by the challenge, pointing at every ant on every surface and telling me what species it was.

"Ant!"

"Ant!"

"Ant!"

Once more unto the breach, I thought wearily (as it was nearly lunch time and I hadn't eaten since ten) and primed my spray tank with the customary hilarious wrist action.

Jeremy offered his services, and I accepted. An ally would be helpful, and he had a box of Quality Street I was willing for him to share. I explained that the ants were probably being attracted to sweet food at this time of the year, and that they would be particularly interested in sugar. Recalling Jeremy's less that perfect memory, I reiterated that sugar was the key issue here as spillages were common at the college. This was the nineties when everyone took sugar in their tea.

Everyone.

We used hygiene, poisons, even proofing. We lifted many slabs adjacent to the buildings and waged terrible war against the ants. The carnage was considerable. So . . . many . . . deaths. The silent screams, the twitching legs and startled compound eyes, the collateral woodlice. It was shock and awe, to a limited value of shocking awesomeness.

You might laugh, but  you weren't there man!

You weren't there.

And then, suddenly, after a few visits, peace broke out. We had won.

But at what price?

Bare ant trails in the gardens. Morsels of food abandoned twixt kitchen and mound. Silent, echoing chambers 'neath patios where once a multitude of inhabitants crawled.

The peacefulness . . . of DEATH!

That's right. Of DEATH!

But that's what I was paid nine grand a year for. The ants competed with us for resources and we competed back, a natural, brutal dance that echoed down the millennia. For the moment,we were winning, although I was well aware that this was just a battle, not the war. The ants were smart, in their own way, and had achieved increasing levels of immunity by cleverly dying in such large numbers that only the resistant ones were left to breed.

Cunning bastards.

I left a report, with advice on preventing a resurgence, and indicated I'd be back in a month to follow up but wasn't expecting anything too exacting. I shook hands with Jeremy and away I went, chewing on one of the long yellow toffees that he wouldn't have eaten anyway, congratulating myself on a job well undertaken.

Oh, how prideful the pride that comes before the fall. How eggy the facial egg. How unpalatable the words that must be eaten. Also, the hat. For, a few short weeks later, on my follow up visit, they were back.

If OMG had been invented, I would totally have said it.

The trails were alive once again. The kitchens re-infested, the morsels of food scavenged and fed to the next generation underground. I'm sure there were even tiny celebratory mariachi bands and raucous pool parties, but my memory of this is a little hazy. It could've just been miniature piñatas.

"But . . . how . . .?" I stammered, thinking of all the work we'd put in. I walked in a daze into the kitchen, barely stopping to put my white trilby on, and immediately, the cause became apparent.

There was grit under my feet.

I knelt, drew my finger over the tiles, and brought it to my eye, to my nose, then to my tongue. My head snapped up as I spat out the residue.

Sugar!

Good shit too. Tate and Lyle.

But with this half answer, only more questions arose. I still had no idea why there was so much S around. The kitchen staff told me they were having to mop three times a day but it wasn't enough, simply dissolving to leave a crystalline layer of sucrose in the corners which the ants adored. You could tell by the minuscule guitars and fireworks.

"Ants!" came a familiar voice, from outside the kitchen. "Ants!"

"Jeremy?" I shouted, "Have you seen all this sug . . ." I stopped and stared as he walked in, a spring in his step and a grin on his fizzog.

In his left hand, a huge bag of sugar was open like a small paper sack containing many granules. I watched in dawning realisation and subsequently dawning horror as Jeremy's right hand dipped in, grabbed a handful and send it scattering across the floor in graceful, horizontal parabolas, a rain of goodness for the enemy, veritable manna from heaven.

"Jer . . ." I whispered, but my voice cracked like some sort of embryo-carrying device made of calcium dropped from a height, "Jeremy. What . . . have . . . you . . . done?"

He walked past me, pushing through the chain curtains of the kitchen door to go out into the garden patio. "I've been controlling them." He practically sang. "Like you told me. I've been controlling them. With sugar."

He strolled across the paving slabs of the patio, generously spreading ant-food over a wide area, a striding god providing for all. Tiny sombreros whizzed into the air, thrown by the ants in their unbridled joy. Possibly.

I fell to my knees in front of the herbaceous borders, and raised my clawed hands to the sky. "Why?" I implored the uncaring cosmos, "It's nearly lunchtime!"

Sighing, I got to my feet, gently prized the sugar away from Jeremy's grasp and went to get my sprayer, it's silver sides reflecting my own grim determination to do what had to be done.

"Ants!" Jeremy pointed out, following me.

"Yes mate." I agreed. "Ants."

Simply the Pest! Petter than all the rest.

I recently wrote a post from my time as a pest controller where I discussed a lady's fear of cockroaches. Phobias are always good to hear about as they are both cruel and funny, like giving Kendal Mint Cake to an elderly aunt with badly fitting dentures.

It reminded me of a time when I was contracted to clear a particularly impressive rat infestation from a farm in deepest, darkest Berkshire, where racehorses roam freely from sauna to hydrotherapy pool, where tiny, rich ex-jockeys from Ireland stare up at you and hope you haven't noticed their pointy, pointy ears, and where people who pop the collars on their polo shirts in the unfathomable belief that it's cool drive "Discos" or "Scoobies" which are always, without fail, green.

Occasionally, in amongst the unnaturally flat fields of the racehorse training grounds, you might come across a real, proper farm where they grow crops and worthwhile, useful animals like cows and pigs.

Don't get me wrong, for these farms are very different from the olden days where, heaven forbid, a real, actual farmer would own and live on the premises. Here, the farms have been bought out by large companies that have converted the buildings into desirable barn conversions that local people can't afford and, for the crops, send in a locum farmer a couple of times a week to make sure things are still alive. For this reason, any old farm buildings can become quite neglected and a haven for pesty critters.

Here was a good example of a wide-spread infestation left to run riot for many years, and centred on a dilapidated old barn once used as an animal feed store.

I considered contacting Bonzo for some mercenary assistance, but he specialised in battles, and this was a war. Also, he didn't like coming down past Nottingham because he thought the cops would be on his tail. Literally.

The substitute farmer met me on site as I arrived to set up the pest control measures (which consisted of, in technical parlance, a shit-load of poison). Once again, I was treated to someone eager to tell me about their phobia. I'm not sure why. I must look like I'm not going to take advantage. Here, the farmer said he didn't like rats. Properly didn't like them. Brought him out in cold sweats.

"What about you?" he asked.

"Me."  I scoffed, "Nah. I've got no phobias."

"Really?" he asked, genuinely interested. "None at all?"

I thought for a moment and shook my head. "Nope," I boasted, "No phobias. No fears. No panic attacks. No anxieties. I have a psychology of steel. I wouldn't even flinch." I wish I chewed matches so I could have taken it out of the corner of my mouth, before saying "You can't. Not in this line of work."

Being twenty-five and enthusiastic, as well as being less likely to chew matches because I might get a splinter and, you know, mouth ulcers are ever so, ever so sore, I proceeded to give him a demonstration about why it wasn't good to be too scared of rats, because they were everywhere in a place like this. I thumped the corrugated iron cladding on the side of the barn wall in which we were standing, and was rewarded with a huge amount of scuttling and running as the hordes of rats behind scrambled for deeper hiding places.

Unfortunately, one of them decided that a better escape route would be from a hole in the cladding above my head, where it leaped to freedom, landing on the nearest available tall thing in the vicinity.

Me.

Or in particular, the bit where my head joins my torso. I believe it's called the neck.

I may have shrieked.

In fact, I may have made a noise that I wasn't even aware I was capable of making since before puberty, so high-pitched with surprise that all dogs within a two mile radius sat up and wondered who was whistling.

"Golly!" I said, (or something similar) "Look at that one!" I pointed as it ran down the entire length of my body, jumped to the floor from knee height and rushed back to it's peers behind the wall. I turned for moral support to the farmer, only to find an empty space echoing only to the sound of running foot falls outside.

He wasn't taking any chances, he later told me when we met up later for a cup of thermos-cool tea and a sandwich, as he didn't want anything like that happening to him, demonstrating a strange take on working-class solidarity.

Although I may not have developed a fear of falling rats, I did from then on show a healthy respect for overhead infestations, as well the leaping ability of our furry friends and the overatedness of thermos flasks.

May the pest man win

In a previous life, before I went over to the dark side and became a paramedic, I was a decent, hard-working pest controller.

No, really.

Before now, it hasn't occurred to me to document any reminiscences about this period in my life, even though I did it for the best part of a decade, starting off with a van and a wage of nine and a half grand a year, and ending up as a trouble shooting technical manager for a national company.

This seems remiss of me, because in the top ten list of occupations recognised as being able to generate anecdotes, surely being a professional killer is up there with priest and window cleaner. And hippo polisher.

I dealt with a wide assortment of pesty species, from the small and crunchy to the big and furry, from the spiky crawly ones to the feathery squawking types. Whilst prevention was the main aim of our industry, we also used poisons, traps, guns and, occasionally, biological control in the form of a Jack Russel called Bonzo.

Bonzo had a pathological hatred of anything ratty, the killing ability of a great white shark with no boundaries, and the problem solving abilities of a cryptography team. Luckily, he also had the IQ of . . . well, a dog, which was possibly the only thing preventing him taking over the world in a fit of pique.

After a particularly recalcitrant infestation of rats in a posh Manchester hotel, where the managers had consistently failed to realise that dumping your food waste in a side alley was akin to sending out flyers to every rodent in a two-mile radius with "COME AND GET IT!" written in peanut butter flavoured ink, I contacted Bonzo's owner interpreter to ask if he was available.

He passed the message on to Bonzo, who turned up that evening in a blacked out A-Team style van. Possibly. My memory of this is a little hazy. I'm not sure but he may have been wearing shades as well. And a bandanna.

I explained our problem via his interpreter, that we needed a quick reduction in the numbers of beasties infesting this area, so we could then implement a more permanent solution.

Bonzo sighed, nodded (I seem to recall), took off his shades and got out of the van. He cricked his neck a couple of times, took a deep breath and then . . .

What followed was like a dance. A macabre dance. A macabre dance of Death. A macabre dance of Death to the tune of the grim reaper, played on the bagpipes of doom, with a beat made from the wails of the departed and the surprised terminal gasps of Bonzo's victims. It was terrible and it was beautiful, and it was waggly.

Anyway, it was effective, and such a shock that the managers agreed to a new hygiene and waste disposal regime lest we revisit the wrath of Bonzo once more upon them.


Some of the most vivid memories I have are not of the infestations, or the premises, or the methods, but of the people I met.

I was contracted to clear a block of council flats of their German cockroach infestation in North London, a difficult task at the best of times. We had got most of the offending areas clear, much to the joy of the residents and the council, although one tricky area was proving resilient to our poisonous magic. I was convinced that a single flat to which we had not been allowed access to by the resident was a potential source of re-infestation, and contacted the council to ask for admittance. They agreed to see what they could arrange.

I turned up the following week and was met by a tall, very well dressed, perfectly coiffured and bejewelled West Indian lady called Joyce, who explained that she was a social worker. She told me that the flat I was interested in was owned by a "vulnerable and rather difficult chap" in his fifties, who might respond to the gentle persuasions of a trained social worker rather than the brutal shoutings of a pest controller.

Fair point, I thought.

She had arranged to meet him at the bottom of the block, from where we would all go up to his flat.

Whilst we waited, we had a chat, and Joyce told me she couldn't do my job, dealing with all those creepy-crawlies and what not. In fact, she had a pathological fear of bugs, and cockroaches in particular, which had even meant she had not been to see close relatives in Jamaica for fear of the roaches there, which she had been reliably informed were as big as kittens.

I began to wonder at the wisdom of her visiting this apartment.

A smell turned up, followed a few minutes later by it's owner, who was the man we were waiting for. He was dishevelled, unkempt, odorous and very, very pissed. Joyce went to shake his hand, thought better of it and turned it into a gesture indicating the direction of the lift, into which we all got.

After a moment, your nose cuts out bad smells, even the acrid stench of a chap who had put on a tracksuit top in 1983, and found it so much to his liking that he hadn't taken it off since. Still, our eyes watered and I noted that the immaculate Joyce had pressed herself almost up to the back wall in abhorrence at the state of the chap in front of us, facing the doors.

I smiled a little unkindly at her discomfort, wondering what his flat was going to be like, before I noticed something moving at the nape of his neck.



It was a young German cockroach.

My mouth gaped and I straightened up, a stupid grin of quite delighted disbelief on my face. Another one scuttled out of the  his hair and ran down into the shiny haven of his tracksuit.

He had a cockroach infestation. Actually on him!

In the excitement of such a discovery and wishing to share it with the world, I forgot about Joyce's prior declaration of hatred for such things and turned to catch her eye, before pointing at the oblivious chap's hitch hiker and making a comically surprised  face to her.

The result was . . . interesting.

She turned a fascinating grey colour, and appeared to be trying to see if it was possible to pass through the solid wall of the lift by pressing herself backwards into it. Her expression was one you might see on a person who, having eaten a delicious salad, suddenly discovers a boiled cat's head at the bottom of the carton. Sweat beaded on her forehead, and a strange noise not unlike someone repeatedly pressing an asthma inhaler over and over again emanated from her mouth.

I started to worry that, should her eyes get any wider, they might actually fall out.

I reconsidered the wisdom of bringing this to her attention, and mouthed an apology at her, which she didn't see as she was now staring resolutely at the light panels in the ceiling and stubbornly refusing to breathe.

Happily, before she expired from hypoxia, the lift stopped and the walking ecosystem that accompanied us staggered out, fumbling for his keys.

I followed, then turned back to Joyce.

"Did you want to hang around out here?" I asked, "Because of the chemicals maybe?" I held up the completely non-toxic to humans cockroach killing baits I was going to use.

She nodded gratefully, and finally took a breath. 

I left and, taking a deep breath myself, entered the flat, which was exactly as you would imagine it to be.

There's nothing does variety like the human race.

Like Mother Earth, the Goddess Gaia supports an intricate network of life.