Janet celebrates over 25 years in pest-control

Janet Dixon and her team

They used to be known as ‘rat-catchers’ but Rochdale woman Janet Dixon has been named as Britain’s longest serving female pest-controller in ‘Pest Control News’ the trade magazine covering the industry.

It’s a ‘lousy’ job but someone has to do it, Janet might have said when she entered her dad’s business 25 years ago but she learned many of the tricks of the trade helping him to catch rats when she was just 7 years old!

Today Janet, who now describes herself as a ‘pest control technician’ runs her dad’s old company Kwickill, based in Todmorden and has gone from strength to strength and the company’s success means that she is no longer ‘scratching’ for a living..

“Originally, the idea was that I was just coming into the business to do the office and admin stuff,” says Janet, “But within three weeks, I was out learning the operational side of the business and the rest is history.”

Janet said that the company deals with a massive and expanding range of infestation problems, Rats, mice, lice, fleas, bed-bugs, cockroaches, feral cats and pigeons are all in a days work. “You never know what the next job will be until the phone rings.” she says.

As well as having a long and successful career in the industry, Janet also ‘trapped’ a husband when she was called out several years ago to deal with an infestation in a cake-shop and took a fancy to its owner.

Climate-change has meant that the work is no longer purely seasonal as it was years ago and many previously foreign species of pests have now settled in the UK.

For environmental reasons, many of the older pest-control gasses and chemicals are now banned and some rodents have developed resistance to many rodenticides.

The careless disposal of food from the fast-food industry and domestic premises has increased massively over the years and has caused Janet many headaches.

Pigeons can cause particular problems and can carry harmful diseases in their droppings. “I just wish people would stop feeding them. They’re pests not pets,” she says forcefully.

Janet says that she has been fortunate in her career and has suffered precious few bites but she recalls that in 1988, she was savaged by a rottweiler when she went out to a farm to help its owner with a mole problem.

Most unusual job? A few years ago she received a call from a Milnrow company who claimed to be suffering from an infestation of Australian red-backed spiders. A doubting Janet attended the company and discovered that these fierce insects had arrived in a consignment of machinery purchased by the company from abroad and shipped out to them, all neatly sealed and packaged together with some unwanted ‘house-guests’.

“A young worker at the factory who had recently spent some time in Australia had correctly identified the insects and thankfully, we were able to resolve the issue with fumigation” she recalled.

Janet has says that she has no real ‘itch’ to retire and in recent years has spent quite a bit of her time talking to clubs and organisations about her very unusual job.