William Ever wonder how cockroaches know that you’re looking at them? Ignore them and they’ll scurry about all willy-nilly; cast even a sideways glance in their direction and they’ll freeze like a boy with his hand down his girlfriend’s shirt when her dad walks in. I was thinking about this (cockroaches, not the shirt thing) as, recently, while I was enjoying a night read in my reading chair, a cockroach scurried; I glanced at him (let’s stick with male pronouns for cockroaches - why not?); he froze; and immediately, a spider pounced. The spider ignored me and went ahead with his spidy stuff. The next day, all I found was a single cockroach leg glued by some thread to the doorframe. Grisly. So I went to my handy spidy reference website and think I found the culprit: Lycosidae, or wolf spider (コモリグモ - do NOT Google it). Yeah: That’s the guy whose done it. The point: Do not kill the spiders in your house. They are your friends. They will keep your home pest-free. There are almost no poisonous spiders in Japan, so not only won’t they harm you, they can’t. Disclaimer: My paternal grandfather was a famous entomologist. Google “William J Baerg” for more info. (“J” has no meaning; he actually had no middle name, but when he first published, he thought a “J” made him sound more authoritarian.) https://www.insects.jp/konbunkumokisida.htm