I invited my college teacher, who was visiting from Scotland, to dinner but he was afraid to enter my house because it was wood. He lived in a home, hundreds and hundreds of years old made of stone and all his neighbors knew America was due to fall down, all at once, any minute, because we build houses OF WOOD; wood doesn’t last. I finally talked him into coming in but he wasn’t very hungry.
My friend from church saw a snake skin in her garden, ran back in the house and gloved up, pulling the rubber cuffs up over her shirt sleeves and her socks up over her pants bottoms so NO SLITHERING could happen to her. Fears aren’t always logical are they? My friend faced her’s, called her nephew and promised him the snake skin, “Sealing her Super Aunt status” but when she went back to her garden, low and behold, what she had been fearing was A CANDY WRAPPER with cress- crossed markings! Solution: Call pet stores looking for a skin, which she did.
Gracie’s grandfather, who looks a lot like John, is afraid of snakes too, but being a North American he isn’t afraid of wood houses, and his solutions are very surprising. See Gracie’s Grandfather Makes Trouble at Amazon.com.  nancymauerman.com