Nancy Gordon winces at the term nitpicker. She prefers lice-removal technician, which is what she calls her employees who pick out nits and the critters that hatch from them at Gordon’s LKY Salon — Lice Knowing You, natch — near Seattle. Business has been booming at such boutique operations ever since the head louse, or Pediculus humanus capitis, developed resistance to the traditionally prescribed shampoos Rid and Nix. But two new treatments — one a mechanical desiccator, the other a potion whose secret ingredient is a lowly bacterium discovered in an abandoned Caribbean rum still — mean that high-priced hand picking has some serious competition.
