No Pestering

Today Dave the mouseman visited my house. Yes, when we came back the other day I smelt a distinctive odour and on looking under the kitchen units what should I find but mouse droppings! It was but the work of a moment to ring Dave of 'No Pestering' and get him to come round and give his expert help and advice. This man is a jewel amongst pest control experts as he is extremely jolly and only lives round the corner so can come at virtually any time of day or night in response to the cry of a distressed victim of pests (only mice, rats, squirrels and cockroaches - he doesn't like anything bigger, or anything that can fight back).

He is also a sensitive soul who not only parks his unmarked van on a different street on a meter (rather than asking for an expensive visitors permit) but sometimes feels sorry for these hideous creatures. Indeed he revealed to me that sometimes when a person calls him over to control the vermin and silently but proudly hands over a jam jar with said vermin hopping up and down for Dave to remove and kill with his bare hands (well in reality some kind of stick I imagine), Dave in fact drives out and SETS THEM FREE. This could of course simply be his way of keeping those calls coming in, but I don't think so. I think he has a heart.

Anyway, he came to our house and as always burst into laughter when I reminded him that one of the reasons we suffer from mice is that our neighbour, who is an even kinder hearted person than Dave, likes to feed her mice with nuts to stop them eating her bread rather than wipe them out through cruel pest control methods. As our house is joined to hers in their nocturnal romps they often fetch up in our kitchen but thanks to Dave's intervention they are swiftly poisoned and hopefully go back under her house to die in the comfort of their homes.

He put down masses of poison whilst I quizzed him on the worst jobs, the most intelligent vermin (rats - there was one that used to live in a restaurant. It lived upstairs and would come down at night, take just the chicken out of the bins and secrete it in a cupboard for a later feast), the most revolting (probably, in his opinion, cockroaches), the dirtiest (mice - no bladders); I found out about the annual pest control conference in Birmingham (pretty dull really, so Dave only goes infrequently if he has no work) and so on and so on. Laurence came down and drew me away saying he had wondered what the party was in the kitchen (Dave, as I said, is a jolly person with a merry laugh). Anyway whilst I was away Dave found a mouse under the fridge which had squeezed its way into a plastic poison trap. He said it had obviously been looking for a bed for the night. Ho Ho Ho.

Still now the poison is laid and it cost me £42.00 which actually is well worth the price to keep the wretched things out of my cupboards. He also gave me some advice: one, the rumour currently flying around Chiswick that feeding mice coca cola will kill them is based on no evidence, and two, those electric plugs don't work either. Finally, he told me that if I didn't want flies in my food recycling bin I must wash it continually and periodically spray it with fly killer without even a hint of criticism that I wasn't doing that already.

Such valuable advice............. he is truly, as I said, a jewel amongst pest controllers. I would recommend him to anyone.