Who You Gonna Call? Lice Busters!

When a louse is on the loose, who you gonna call? 

Not the exterminator, unless you want a bunch of toxic chemicals sprayed on your head.

Maybe you could do what monkeys do. Pick the little pests out one by one — just don’t eat them.

Or you could call Penny Warner.

She’s a nurse who nit-picks for a living.  Her kids don’t mind, and her husband doesn’t either because it helps pay the bills. 

Warner is a registered nurse and the founder of Texas Lice Squad — a head-lice removal business she runs from her treatment center in Missouri City, Texas.

“It sounds strange, but this is the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done,” she told NurseWeek Magazine. “People are so glad I’m there. An infestation is a family crisis that’s emotionally devastating, but you don’t understand until you go through it.”

We’ve all seen the emotional toll. Mostly in the form of that second-grade kid who nobody ever talked too again after a bout of head lice. Whatever happened to him? Nothing good, we’re sure.

Warner decided to enter the lice business in 2006, when her own daughters were victimized at summer camp. Warner realized she could make a business out of removing head lice as well as educating people on the harsh fact of lice: Everyone’s fair game.

She now travels through Texas and de-louses families. She charges $65 for a household of four. That’s just for inspection and lice-infestation assessment. The actual removal of lice costs $60 per hour, for a minimum of two hours. 

Each week she handles about 50 families mostly from Austin, Dallas and San Antonio.  Others just buy her products, including a spiral, micro-grooving comb called “The Nit Free Terminator” that gets underneath the eggs and drags them out. Ewwwww!

After she’s finished, Warner issues a written confirmation that the child is now lice-free and may be allowed to socialize again. Just not with us.