I first saw it lying right under the fence, stretched out a good eight to ten feet long.  A rope?  Did I put that there?

In the next moment I realized what it was.

When I moved out to Sonoma County’s “wine country,” I knew there’d be wildlife—you know, birds, and maybe a few raccoons, and then of course there are all those horses in the field across the street.

But where the heck am I, I thought—the wilds of Africa?—as I stared at the giant snake, now stretched out in the entrance to my home, just as relaxed and nonchalant as if he owned the place.

In that moment, my city persona returned in full force.  I hadn’t blinked when the well pump broke, but simply called the repair man and paid the hefty bill.  I’d gotten used to the smell from the horses, and found invigorating the constant weeding, watering, and all-around maintenance that my little Ponderosa demanded.  But this—this thing, thick as two of my wrists, its tongue flicking in and out in a threatening manner—was too much.

Get me the heck out of here! I said aloud, as I picked up a nearby brick.

The snake was quick—quicker than me, at any rate.  I heaved the brick, but the snake darted deftly out from under it in a whiplash motion, and then coiled up to face down its attacker.  I spied the crosshatched markings on its back: yellow and black.  A rattlesnake!

I bounded into the house and called the police.  The cop on the line sighed and gave me the number of the Wildlife Preservation Team—yes, they have one!  The wildlife guy was circumspect: Well, what does it look like?  I explained that it looked like a rattlesnake to me, but he brushed this aside—after all, who’s the expert here?—and asked, “Where are you located?”  I told him, and he exclaimed, “Oh, Strawberry Hill—that’s a gopher snake for sure.  The place is full of ’em.”

“Are you sure?  I mean, how can you know unless you’re here, looking at it?”

He sighed, perhaps recalling similar conversations with hysterical homeowners over the years.

“Is there a rattle?  At the end of its tail—do you see a rattle?  Hear one?”

Inching closer to the thing, which was stilled coiled up in a posture of wariness, weaving and bobbing its triangular head, I cupped my ear, listening hard.  I had to admit the snake appeared to be rattle-less.

“It’s a gopher snake,” he said, “a good thing to have in your yard.  You’ve got plenty of gophers around there.”

“Sure do,” I said, thanking him for his help.

The snake had uncoiled by the time I got off the phone, and now it was moving.  The thing glided over the stones in my driveway, quick and cool as water, headed straight for the garage.  I knew just where it was going: The makeshift door had a space big enough for a snake—even a large one like this—to crawl underneath and find shelter in the cool darkness of my tool shed.

I panicked.  How the heck would I ever get it out of there?  Would I have to face it every time I went in there to get a tool, to get my lawn mower, wondering if it was lurking there is the shadows, waiting for me?

I ran into the garage, where it showed up seconds later, its javelin-like head piercing the small opening beneath the door—and I jabbed it with a shovel, hard.  It shivered and curled up into a ball, writhing and looking somewhat stunned—even surprised.  It turned its head upward, giving me what looked like a sad, ironic glance—as if to say, I’m only a harmless gopher snake, after all

I was immediately filled with a rush of remorse.  Had I killed it?  It writhed about and withdrew back into the driveway.  Then it stopped moving.

It lay there for days, until—out of shame, lest someone should see it and connect me with the heinous murder—I picked it up with a stick and threw it into the drainage ditch.  It lay there for a week until some animal carried it off.

Why did I kill it?  I asked myself that question for days afterward.  It was, after all, a stupid and unnecessary act.  Gophers plague my otherwise perfect lawn, the blight of every garden in the area.  The snake posed no threat to humans—indeed, as we have seen, humans are the main threat to them.  And that is precisely the point: We humans, who kill each other with ruthless efficiency and little provocation, are the real threat.  Driven by primordial fears and irrational whims, our dark passions rule us even as we swear by cold reason.

I killed the snake out of fear—fear of the natural world, with its unpredictable incursions, its fearsome alien visitors from what is truly a planet other than the one I’d been living in most of my life.  After 40 years in the Big City, I am still a city boy, and always will be, for all my gentleman-farmer pretensions—just another city boy, afraid of his own shadow and leaving destruction in his wake.