Tim Powles' rodent-tracking senses are so finely tuned he can quite literally smell a rat and his karate-honed reflexes give him an edge when it comes to catching his four-legged foes. Yet the district council's rat man is fascinated by his favourite quarry and even keeps pet rats at home.

Chief reporter Sam Bond spoke to the paradoxical pest control officer.

TIM Powles is a man who is never going to be out of work. With the rat population on the increase all over the country, all he and other pest controllers can do is hope to keep a lid on the problem.

The weather has been kind to rats in recent years and this, combined with a plentiful supply of food, has helped them flourish.

But even without fate doling out these advantages, rats would have no trouble getting by.

"You're never going to eradicate the rat," says Tim. "Their instincts for survival are second to none. "They have extremely acute hearing an smell, they are expert climbers and swimmers and they can quickly adapt to whatever environment they find themselves in.

"That's one of the reasons I find them so interesting I suppose, and such a challenge."

Though his job as a pest control officer for Stroud District Council sees Tim pitting his skills against all sorts of vermin, from indestructible cockroaches to cute but annoying mice, it is the rat that tops his list of adversaries.

It may seem odd, then, that he keeps two very friendly rats, Gertie and Daisy, as pets.

"I didn't plan to have rats," he says. "But these two were rescued from a council house in Cashes Green.

"Their owners had abandoned them when they left the property and they were living among the refuse bags outside the house. "There had been quite a few but the others had been massacred by the local cats.

"I kept them while we were looking to rehome them and after I'd had them in the house for three or four weeks I got quite attached to them."

And his love of rats does not stop with Daisy and Gertie. "Rats are my favourite thing, they're fascinating creatures," he says.

"Before I took this job I was the same as anybody else and just saw them as disease-ridden vermin.

"But now I have the greatest respect for them. "However lovely they are, though, you don't want them running around your house.

"I don't like killing them really but if they're getting into people's houses, getting at the food and gnawing through wires you've got no choice."

During his 11 years in the job Tim has studied the rat at length. He understands its biology, its habits and even its social life. In short, he knows what makes a rat tick.

"It's certainly an advantage to know your enemy," he laughs. He explains how the wily rodents need to be tricked into taking poisoned bait and the great lengths they will go to making sure food is safe before tucking in.

And he points out that while they can carry a number of diseases, from Viles' Disease to the gruesome sounding but not-too-scary rat bite fever, they are not the filthy animals most of us see them as.

"They groom 15 or 20 times a day," he said. "They've got a bad reputation and it's not entirely deserved."

Nevertheless, Tim has trained himself to be an efficient rat-killing machine. And when you go one-on-one with a frightened rat any advantage is welcome, as Tim can testify.

"They're wild creatures and they do get terrified when your handling them," he says.

"And your average adult rat can bite with a pressure of 25,000 lbs per square inch. "It's excruciatingly painful when they really go for you, like somebody put a pair of pliers on your finger.

Trained in karate, Tim reckons the martial art boosts his effectiveness as the angel of death of the rodent world. "If I have to resort to primitive methods it definitely helps with the reflexes," he says.

"When you've got a rat in your living room running and leaping about they can be quite difficult to catch."

Tim's job does not come without risks and he is no stranger to Stroud Hospital's casualty department. He talks of the time a canister full of insecticide exploded and covered him in bug powder designed to ravage insects' nervous systems. "I had to have my eyes flushed out at hospital," he said.

And he has been nipped by scared rats more times than he can remember while wasp stings are all in a day's work.

Tim reckons our distrust of rats stems from the days of the plague and has been passed down through the generations. But his own arachnophobia gives him an insight into other people's fear of the rodents.

"I can't stand spiders," he said. "I once got a call asking me to come and deal with an escaped tarantula, apparently it was the size of a dinner plate.

"I refused to go. I told them that if I saw it I'd faint and then they would have to deal with me and the spider."

Tim has been investigating and dealing with infestations for years and is pretty shock-proof but now and then a truly legendary job crops up.

"We had an incident in Nailsworth where we took 172 rats out of a front room," he said. "A man had been breeding them for shows but when he died his wife couldn't cope and had let them out of their cages and put their food on the floor.

"By the time we were called in they were everywhere. "You'd open a drawer and there would be half a dozen of them curled up in there.

"The other problem was is she saw each and every one of them as a pet so we had to catch them all alive then take them to the vets to have them put down."

"Wasps are the skinheads of the insect world," he says as he gets suited up and ready to tackle an angry hive. "But like everything in the animal kingdom their just defending themselves."

Killing the creatures he loves gnaws at Tim's conscience like a persistent rat. "It's like all jobs," he said. "You have good days and bad days and sometimes I do get sick of all the death."