McClatchy News Service

CHICAGO -- Perched in a hairdresser's chair, 9-year-old Grace Lasky raised her eyebrows as a woman slicked one of the salon's specialty products through her long, straight hair.

No, Grace wasn't getting her hair styled in the swank Lincoln Park, Ill., boutique. The woman pulling a fine-toothed comb through the girl's hair was looking for nits, the eggs laid by lice and a recurring annoyance for the thirdgrader.

"It sort of feels itchy," Grace said.

The traffic at the recently opened Chicago salon called Hair Fairies -- The Head Lice Helpers is just one indicator of the anxiety and desperation parents feel when they hear a student in their child's class has head lice. Since Hair Fairies opened last month in Chicago, they have seen at least 300 clients, said Damaris Rodriguez, manager of the Los Angeles store, who came to town to help with the opening. The Chicago salon is the fourth Hair Fairies in the nation.

Though there's no evidence of a head lice epidemic, the bugs have been getting harder to banish as they become increasingly resistant to prescription drugs and over-the-counter remedies, such as Nix and RID.

"Over time, the lice develop a resistance. That's what bugs do, like mosquitoes get resistant to DDT," said Dr. Barbara Frankowski, former chairwoman of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on School Health.

Ready to come to the aid of frustrated parents are easily dozens of delousing outfits across the nation, said Richard Pollack, a Harvard University public health entomologist who questions their value.

"It's not surprising to find someone doing this in any community on a word-of-mouth basis," Pollack said. "They seem to be growing like the McDonald's franchise."

Amy Graff recognized the potential for a lucrative, if somewhat unusual, business about three years ago and opened LouseCalls, which makes house calls in South Florida.

"I felt that there was a need for it here," she said. "There are a lot of head lice, and people don't really know what to do."

Hair Fairies founder and CEO Maria Botham said she came up with the idea in 1997 after reading an article about head lice.

"I ran it by my friends and family, and they all said I was absolutely nuts," said Botham, 37. She plunged ahead anyway, opening her first shop in Los Angeles in 1999. That one is expecting a gross revenue of $1.8 million for 2007 and $2.5 million for 2008.

Botham went with the design of a luxury boutique in one of the city's ritziest neighborhoods to help break the stigma that only the dirty and underprivileged get lice, she said.

Lice, which do not discriminate by socioeconomic class, are not necessarily more prevalent in Lincoln Park. However, it's one city neighborhood where people have the money to pay the salon's $95-an-hour charge.

Mary Lasky, Grace's mother, had been treating the girl with over-the-counter remedies since October, when she found a live louse in the girl's hair. She said she'd had enough when administrators at her daughter's North Side of Chicago private school spotted nits in the girl's hair in mid-December and sent her and six classmates home.

"I'm so frustrated, so I drove here," said Lasky, of Wrigleyville, Ill. "I would have paid $1,000" to have gotten rid of the bugs the first time around."

When customers first arrive, a technician performs a screening to determine if there are any nits or lice. They comb through the hair dry, wet it down, apply conditioner and go through the whole head again.

"We're combing thoroughly throughout the entire head before we say you're lice-free," Rodriguez said. If a nit or louse is found, the salon schedules three to four treatments.

Nancee Siegel, who turned to Chicago's Hair Fairies when her 10-year-old son got lice, said it made her feel better just to have another set of eyes examining him.

"It's really a hard thing to do alone," she said. "It's a time, I think, as a mom, that you feel very vulnerable."