Billy Bretherton in "Billy the Exterminator"

Billy Bretherton has a big job. Bigger than the time he trapped an eight-foot alligator strolling through a rich neighborhood. Bigger than when he chased 70,000 bats out of a baseball stadium before opening day.

This job is to make a reality show about pest control heartwarming. And one full season in, it's safe to say he's good at it.

Fresh with a new show title and this time with a full-season order, "Billy the Exterminator" premieres its second season on A&E Wednesday, March 10.

The show's first season (which only had a 13-episode run last winter) was a runaway hit, so the show about a family-run pest-control company taking on all the varmints Louisiana has to offer is back.

The location in the middle of Louisiana's bayou country means the family comes up against a pretty large and strange array of creatures in the day-to-day operations of the business, Vexcon, which Billy founded in 1996.

It's a tough and dirty job, but that's obvious. What's a little more surprising is that the family and A&E are putting the focus on the softer side of things -- less on the rough-and-tumble technicians' glove-clad hands and more on their hearts.

Previously titled simply "The Exterminators," A&E has promised that despite the name change, the show will still be a family affair. As with last season, much of the footage will involve the interaction between Billy, his father Billy Sr., mother Donnie, wife Mary and brother Rick. In this way and many others the show echoes (with the network's encouragement, most obviously through the name change) another A&E family-business hit, "Dog the Bounty Hunter."

"Billy and his family offer the unique blend of drama and humor which viewers have come to expect from our stable of real families in extraordinary situations," said A&E vice-president Robert Sharenow. " 'The Exterminators' fits perfectly with our brand of eye-opening real-life series such as 'Dog the Bounty Hunter'... representing remarkable personal stories in an entertaining but raw and honest way."

Also like "Dog," the series goes a long way to show that Billy does a nasty job as nicely as he can. Billy makes a point of releasing as many animals as he can back into the wild, and Vexcon's website even states that the company uses organic pesticides.

So that's the hands and the heart covered, but another surprising thing about this show is the brain behind it.

Perhaps it seems like shaking raccoons out of walls and gassing roaches is a relatively straightforward task, but Billy the Exterminator has a ton of education to back him up.

He started studying entomology (the scientific study of insects) with the U.S. Air Force, and later added to that with two years of correspondence study with Purdue University. He's since earned a master's certification for termite control at Louisiana State University.

He'll certainly be putting all of that education to use this season, along with all the rest of it. This time around, Billy and his family will take on a beaver wreaking havoc at a summer camp, a rattlesnake slithering loose in a funeral home, water moccasins, wasps, another alligator (this one in a family pond), as well as "the largest roach infestation of their career."

If it sounds like a dirty job, that's because it is. In fact, Billy Bretherton got his break when he was featured on the cleverly titled Discovery Channel series "Dirty Jobs." Production company September Films liked what they saw and took the idea of building a show around him to the suits at A&E.

"Billy is very different from the average exterminator because he is extremely animal friendly and compassionate," said one of those suits, vice-president Elaine Frontain Bryant. "Also, he handles much more than average pests like roaches and termites -- he has been called out for snakes in houses, alligators in ponds, and a family of possums in walls! He is fearless."

And again like "Dog the Bounty Hunter," Billy does his job with a distinctive flair.

Forgoing the traditional navy-blue coveralls with the embroidered name on the front, Billy does his exterminating in toe-to-shoulder leather, fingerless mesh gloves, a skull-and-crossbones belt buckle and a spiky haircut that makes him look as much like a wild animal as a man who catches them.