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‘The sewer smell stays with you’: Londoners on keeping positive in a grisly job
Spreadsheets and video conferencing got you down? Well, at least you’re not dealing with decomposing rats and unattended bodies that have kind of melted into sofas. Yep, you read that right. However, some Londoners’ everyday jobs do involve such grisly horrors – and yet they manage to stay positive. We asked them how they do it. The ratcatcher Illustration: Genie Espinosa Ignat Charakchiev, 29, is a pest-control technician at Fantastic Services, which tackles everything from cleaning to rat-proofing Pest control can be a dirty business. We deal with fleas, foxes, bed bugs, pigeons, squirrels and other infestations. But rats are the worst. Rats are gross. They’re smelly, diseased, they urinate everywhere, they can bite and however you block their holes, they can always find a way back. But rats are also very clever. So to beat them, you’ve got to show them respect, learn how to think like them. A lot of people think we’re just out to kill things. But it’s all about control. Poison is always a last resort. Humane traps aren’t always that humane. Take sticky pads, for instance. I’ve found pads before with just a tail left on them, or a foot. How desperate has an animal got to be to chew its own foot off? The smell of a decomposing rat is pure awful. It’s hard to put into words. Just rotting flesh that’s been left to fester for weeks. It really gets inside you. Rats aren’t always the most disgusting part. I remember visiting a house where rats had chewed through the toilet p