To Spit, Or Not To Spit

The day we arrived in Paris, one of the things about our apartment building that surprised me most was the printed sign on the right, posted at the bottom of our stairwell:

It reads, "Forbidden to smoke and to spit in the stairs." I can only assume it's translated into Chinese underneath. (Can anyone confirm?)

The handwritten note on the left is related to an incident Maggie had yesterday afternoon. A neighbor rang the doorbell (the doorbell is becoming a real problem) and when Maggie opened the door to the middle-aged woman, she accused Maggie of having let Panda run around in the stairwell off-leash, and then accused Panda of peeing in the 4th-floor hallway. Maggie protested as best she could, but nothing she could say would convince the woman. Panda, surprised and offended, said nothing. (Becky, who was on the phone with Maggie at the time, is our witness.)

On her way to babysit later in the day, Maggie noticed that someone had posted this note, which reads, "The owner of the dog that peed on the 4th floor is invited to clean up the mess." So delightfully passive. And apparently the French love underlining things in their chastisements/complaints/directions!

This morning, in protest of the woman's groundless accusation and in the spirit of cheeky helpfulness, I added "or cat or child" to the note, since we should suspect dogs, cats, and children equally in the mystery of the 4th-floor pee-spot.