The first year this happened, we didn't know what to expect. We didn't have any bugs (that we knew of). But, we didn't really know how to refuse when the man with the canister and the guardienne came to our door.
We let them in and the man sprayed a small amount of stuff under the sink in the kitchen and the sink in the WC. We told them we didn't have any more sinks, a lie, of course. The little marks are still on the wall from this event and it happened five years ago.
In principal, I am against insecticides. They kill the bugs but poison us at the same time. We die from something other than having a bug in our cereal, we die from the result of the poison, just like the bugs.
To avoid the bug guy, we use a number of schemes. The easiest is to not answer the door. Our guardienne doesn't have a key to our place, so they eventually tire of trying and leave.
But today, we were coming home just as the guy was coming down the stairs in our building. He didn't recognize me, so he knew he hadn't "hit" our place yet. He asked me where I lived. Ah ha! For once, English is quite handy. I just looked him right in the eye and told him that I'm American and I don't know what he was saying to me. He pulled out about five English words, not in a sentence, so I didn't answer. Then, he asked, in French if I lived on the fourth floor! I won't be fooled, I just looked at him and told him (English) that I didn't understand. So, I jumped in the elevator, pushed our floor, but to cover up our floor (he seemed pretty persistent), I hit floor #6 so that after I got off, the elevator continued on up to the top floor.
So far he hasn't knocked but we're keeping a low profile. I guess just like everything, if the rest of the apartments are debugged, the bugs will be dead and won't come our way either. Or, perhaps all the bugs will parade into our place because the rest of the apartments have been poisoned. We'll take our chances.
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