The day after Christmas, after a week of treating my entire family with drugstore lice cures, combing every inch of each of my daughters’ thick hair, and doing endless loads of laundry, I finally called the Lice Clinic. Two hours later, all four of us were lice-free. The next time the bugs hitched a ride, I called right away. And the time after that, too.

Founder Daria Whettam spins my three visits in one year as a positive. “Your child got lice because it’s a loving human being,” she says. “She got it because she was hugging someone.” As she eradicates lice from the heads of Seattle’s children, Whettam tries to do the same to the stigma surrounding them. “[It] has zero to do with hygiene,” she says. “In order to get lice, you have to have head-to-head contact; there has to be a bridge between the hair.” 

The athletic, energetic woman with a lilting Polish accent is a bit of a celebrity among Northwest Seattle parents, for both her nontoxic lice-eradication skills and her chairside manner. “Try to give lice to someone you don’t like,” she says, laughing. “It’s not possible.”

Her unique blend of honesty, humor, and empathy remedies nightmare situations with ease parents can only dream of. “This is my favorite part of this job. You take the stress away from parents,” she says. The upbeat employees, the giant TV with a Nintendo Switch in the lobby, the smaller one tuned to Is It Cake? in the treatment room: It all shows that, in the words of the sign out front, lice happens.

Whettam first learned just how often lice happens back in 2008, while working at a children’s hair salon. If a stylist noticed the bugs, regulations required them to stop immediately. The parade of kids walking out with half-cut hair inspired her new career path. After numerous iterations, including a mobile service, Whettam opened the Greenwood location in 2017. A steady stream of families file in each day for head checks. If there are lice, the treatment—combing through with oil—takes another hour or so and comes with a free follow-up check and five-week lice-free guarantee.

The team at the Lice Clinic can almost track the migration of lice around the city; they expressed surprise once when my daughter said where she went to school, then nodded knowingly when they learned her sister went elsewhere—to a school they knew was mid-outbreak. The best way to slow an outbreak, says Whettam, is to talk about it. 

“It’s actually a very kind thing to do. Tell your friends.” Though she also acknowledges the downside to doing so: “As soon as you say the word lice, you start itching.” The phenomenon even extends to people with what she calls natural immunity—baldness. 

For those of us with more hair, Whettam offers her best tip for prevention, demonstrated by her and her staff daily: Embrace the ponytail.