Bedbugs in France Redux

Why France has worked itself into a frenzy about bedbugs (economist.com)

Check the above linked Economist article about France's current obsession with bedbugs. History repeats itself. In Spring of 1967 I lived in the southern banlieue of Paris, France in the community of Chatillon. We were four male Mormon missionaries living in a two-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a four-story walk-up. Our building was on a carrefour... a public square.

I was living the Mormon missionary life. Early up. Scripture study. Breakfast of chocolate milk and baguette. After a shower and getting dressed, my missionary companion, Elder House, and I would mount our small motorbikes (Velo Solex) and ride to our proselyting areas. Our day included periods of door-to-door tracting (sic) and meetings with "investigators."

During the course of a day while proselyting, I noticed that an itchy rash (insect bites?) on my forearms, legs, and buttocks was worsening. I had been aware of the condition for three days or so. While chit chatting with one of our investigators, a fifty something woman, in her flat, I naively described my rash condition. "Show me your forearm," said the woman. She looked at my red spotted forearm and shrieked, punaises!

Punaise has two meanings in French: thumb tacks and bed bugs, a red colored flat looking insect known to inflict itchy bites on humans, found in bedding, and known to be very difficult to eradicate. I recall that the woman, while very concerned, was nice enough. She told us that we must leave her apartment immediately and not come back until the bed bug problem was resolved. The woman added that we should tell no one about this problem else we would become neighborhood pariahs.

Puzzled (I hadn't noticed any bed bugs up to this point) we returned to our apartment and searched our bedroom for bed bugs. Initially, I didn't notice anything amiss. I looked over at a wall and, "voila," just below a paper poster hanging on the wall was one of the little red critters. One little bug after a room search... that didn't seem to be such a big deal. I took down the poster and was boulverse (shocked) to find hundreds of the reddish critters slow motion moving on top of an oozing, syrupy substance. Elder House and I immediately ripped off the bed clothes of my bed, upended the mattress, and there the red, thumbtack like insects were in a colony 10X the size of the wall poster bed bug community. I thought that the sluggish moving insects in the syrupy ooze would make a good horror movie subject. The bed bugs, shunning the light of day, would come out at night to feed... on me, and then return to their other worldly exudation during light of day.

Shaken by the woman investigator's admonition not to broadcast our plight, Elder House and I decided to try to exterminate the bed bug infested bedroom ourselves. We went to a hardware store and purchased a dozen aerosol cans of insect killer. We returned to the apartment, closed the windows, changed our clothes carefully verifying that our change of clothes had no bed bugs on them, and with the bedroom door slightly ajar, with extended arm, emptied the contents of the dozen cans of aerosol spray bug killer into the bedroom.

We didn't open the door to the bedroom for eight hours. We, happily, concluded that the problem was solved as all of the bugs seemed to be dead. We cleaned up the mess and burned the bug residue in a trashcan behind the apartment. In fact, our plan had worked, and the bed bug infestation did not return. As advised, we kept the event to ourselves and went on with our proselyting work.

I have been amused to see the publicity of the current bed bug invasion of France. Remembering my own bed bud experience in 1967 I can understand why the French get worked up by bed bugs. Sacre bleu! I have been there. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose!"