After 30 years of battling with some of Dubai's least welcome residents, Dr Alan Dickson insists that not all of them are dangerous.
As with most of Dr Alan Dickson's statements, an impish chuckle concludes his account of his most disgusting mission.
A nauseous pong had apparently made an expat's house so nauseous "you would vomit the moment you entered the house".
Only after a long search did he discover a huge rat slowly rotting away in the drip tray beneath the fridge.
But even he turns momentarily serious when we discuss the snakes that people keep sending him. "They mostly come chopped into pieces," he says sadly.
Clearly, after almost 30 years battling some of Dubai's least-welcome residents, Dr Dickson has not lost his enthusiasm for creepy-crawlies.
And if few of us share it, then that is because we prefer myths to facts.
The ugly truth
"There are beneficial ones and ones that can cause damage, but people tend to be far more worried about the ugly ones," he says.
In Dubai, all said, there is little to worry about. In his early years here, Dr Dickson regularly encountered malaria mosquitoes and sewage-eating cockroaches, while his garden in Jebel Ali village was visited by venomous snakes.
Today, tighter regulations, prompt refuse-collection and urbanisation have banished them all. Even the garbage-chomping brown rat is being displaced by the fruit-fancying black rat.
But bugs somehow inspire the city's rumour-mill to churn out phenomenal quantities of guff (although, to be fair, the Gulf War has brought the occasional overseas assist).
Have you heard about the deadly Australian spiders that spread terror in Jebel Ali exurbs?
Or about the sea snakes whose bite is invariably mortal, but whose tiny jaws can only bite you on the flesh between your fingers?
Or about the desert spiders that feed off camels and unwary campers, injecting an anaesthetic so its victims are unaware?
All these widely-circulated tales are false, according to Dr Dickson. Not that we should relax. There are some other ones you really have to watch out for…
Dr Dickson's introduction to the pest-world came when, fresh from his biology doctorate, he joined the eager throng of biologists looking to participate in the green revolution of the ‘70s. Some 87 job applications later, he was touring Scotland in a Rentokill van.
"The good thing about pest control is that although the animals are almost always the same ones, at least the place changes," he says.
In any case, following in the wandering footsteps of his sailor father, he leapt at an opportunity to move to the Middle East.
Here, it was basically more of the same — a succession of mundane infestations punctuated by extreme weirdness.
An odd challenge
His most peculiar challenge was a pet snake that crawled out of a passenger's bag on a plane. Eventually, after a fruitless 8-hour search, it showed up in the refreshments trolley.
Then, there were the cockroaches that suddenly started cropping up in dishes served by Dubai restaurants.
At length, Dr Dickson obtained a sample from one of his clients and discovered that a group of crafty Australian tourists in search of free nosh were sticking dead specimens in their meals.
"Most cases of cockroaches in food are deliberate," he says. "In Scotland, I had a case of cockroach infestation in a fish packing plant — only when I put them under the microscope I found that the creatures were actually diving beetles put in there by a disgruntled employee."
But such fraudsters are not the biggest pest of all.
"The worst problem in my business are people who get delusions of parasitic infection," he says.
"There is nothing you can do to prove to them that they are not infected with fleas or bedbugs or mites. It is quite horrific."
Once again, he is momentarily cast into a reflective silence.
