Back at work

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 12 January 2005 22:57:47

The thing about working in Pest Control is that sometimes it can be fascinating, sometimes it can be incredibly mundane and occasionally exasperating. Today was exasperating.

To explain todays exasperation, perhaps I should explain the mundane part of the job. A lot of my work involves visiting sites doing "routines". That means checking rodent bait boxes to see if any of the bait has been eaten. 90% of the time, it hasn't, so I write a report for the customer giving them a clean bill of health and then drive off in my little white van to the next site where I do exactly the same thing. Oh, and I have to hear "hilarious" jokes like "'Ere, we've got a pest in the manager's office you can get rid of!". (Gosh how I laughed. It's still nearly as funny as it was the first time I heard it)

Now then on to bait checking. You may have sometimes seen metal boxes bearing the name of a Pest Control company bolted to the side of an external wall. Most people mistakenly think that these are rat traps. Well, they're not, they are bait boxes. They contain bait (strangely enough, which is why the're called "bait boxes"). This bait is basically a wholegrain cereal block containing an anticoagulant poison (look it up in the dictionary if you need to) and coloured blue so as not to confuse them with those nutri-grain bars you buy in the newsagent. What happens is that ratty goes into the box, eats the stuff and later dies back in his nest. They are not traps. They don't catch rats. It's not what they're designed for.

Except today that is. I was called out to a branch of a large multinational fast food chain who had been experiencing problems with mice in their restaurant. Also present were the area manager of said chain and the local Environmental Health Officer (hereinafter referred to as EHO). After smoothing things over, topping up baits and assuring them that everything was under control, I went outside to check the external rat boxes, with the EHO right on my heels.

When I opened the box, I found a very large, very dead and very smelly rat! OK, so I sometimes get called to a site to remove the occasional dead body, but this is the first time I have ever found one in a bait box, and the one time it happens, the bloody EHO is looking over my shoulder. She wasn't impressed.

I had a meeting with my boss shortly after who thought it was hilarious and at least bought me a cup of tea.

On a completely different track, I've started training/practising for the practical part of the driving instructor's test. My trainer was very impressed and I haven't slipped back into too many bad habits in the last two years since I last attempted the test. In fact he reckons that, in many ways, my driving has improved. I just need to blow a few cobwebs away and hopefully apply for the test in a couple of weeks.

If I pass, I suppose I'll have to change my blog title again.