A Tail of the City

J. J. Hillard

Over the years, in different jobs and various places, I've shed my own “skin” many times and admit to a preference now to perch high on barstools.

In San Francisco I am on a self-appointed mission of mercy, or so I hope. On Castro Street I hop out of my friend's car and beeline for the trash can he indicates on the sidewalk. It’s one of those metal and concrete bins with a pebble aggregate surface, the hulking kind urban designers engineer to withstand direct hits from drivers with bad parking skills or high blood alcohol levels, or both. Tonight, it is glutted with garbage, which is in my favor.              

I shove my hands in and scrounge through the bin, a specific search image in mind, all the while hoping to avoid direct contact with any bags of dog shit, drug paraphernalia or other random grot of urban life. My actions are based on what my friend heard earlier from a bartender on the block. Something he learned both shocks and appalls me. I delay our going out for a meal until after I make my attempt to address the terrible injustice he described.

I find what it is I’m after in a small, crumpled brown paper bag. I lift the bag out of the trash slowly, open it, and peek inside. What I see is something that shouldn't be in a paper bag in this or any other trash bin, in this or any other city. Thankfully, the hapless little creature is alive and unharmed.

I identify it immediately—a baby Crotalus oreganus, the Northern Pacific Rattlesnake. Crotalus  is the Latin term for the genus of this species, which is derived from krotalon, the Greek word for rattle, as in the sound made by its tail end appendage. It’s patterned with brown and beige markings and couldn't be more than a foot long. I don’t suffer from herpetophobia. I grew up in rural-adjacent Northern California with gopher snakes and other native and exotic reptiles as pets. Also, this is not my first encounter with native rattlesnakes. Our fearless and foolish Siamese cat sometimes alerted us to their presence in the backyard by annoying them enough to buzz their tail segments. Once as kids my brother and I, safely perched high in a bay tree, watched two male rattlesnakes neck-wrestle for breeding rights to a nearby female. If you have no limbs or horns, this tends to limit grappling options in such dominance contests.

Tonight, the City is shrouded in its typical overlay of chilly fog. I know that even immature rattlesnakes have functional venom glands, but this cold-blooded reptile remains inactive, coiled at the bottom of the bag. I judge the risk to me of a bite and envenomation is minimal. Any snake-charming skills I have won’t be needed this night.

My friend isn't as sanguine as I am about sharing space with a pit viper in his small sports car. I fold over the top of the bag a couple of times to prevent its escape and assure him no harm will come to us and ask him to drive by my studio apartment so I can leave the snake there. He agrees reluctantly. He’s just not into snakes. He doesn’t turn on the heat in the car, so the reptile stays inactive. He asks me what I intend to do with it. I don’t have an exact idea yet. I hold the bag between my feet in the car’s footwell to keep it from shifting around as we travel up and down the hills in my neighborhood. Who knows when this snake had its last meal? It could be starving, even near death.

At my place I transfer the snake to a large glass jar for safekeeping overnight. I judge nearby Golden Gate Park is too cool an environment for the survival of such a sun-loving serpent. Two snakes are native to the City: the endangered, flamboyantly striped San Francisco garter snake, and the seldom-seen minuscule ring-necked snake. I've not heard of rattlesnakes living within city limits. Over dinner at a Chinese restaurant my friend and I talk, and I figure out the best course of action, one that ensures the snake has some sort of future—or at least more value than being treated as urban waste.

I suppose this situation shows I’m not cut out to be an investigative reporter, otherwise I would be taking copious notes from interviews with my friend and the bartender who'd tossed the snake in the trash bin out on the street. I’d try to be diplomatic so the barkeep wouldn't get defensive and think I’m accusing him of animal cruelty. How did he find it? Did he know the perpetrator? Did he know what type of snake it is? Why did he decide to throw it away? And in my notes, I would think up various scenarios as to how this animal ended up where it did in the City. Was it someone on a day trip who captures the snake, knows what it is, brings it back to SF, and as a sick practical joke releases a venomous reptile on the floor among unsuspecting bar patrons? What is the person's motivation? Did they act alone? Is it someone's personal vendetta against the bar, the bartender, or LGBTQ+ people in general? I’ll never know.

So, what will be the final disposition of this little snake? I decide to call the herpetology department at the California Academy of Sciences and tell them what I have in my possession. They agree to take it as a living donation. I have few other options. I have no car and live in the upper Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, within easy walking distance of the Cal Academy. I hike over there and drop it off with a herpetologist and give him an account of how it came into my possession. Maybe the snake will end up as part of their museum specimen collections, or perhaps that scientist will take pity on it and release the rattler alive in a rural place in a nearby but warmer Bay Area county. I hope the latter is its fate. It could even end up as the herpetologist’s pet. There are people who keep other types of venomous creatures, like scorpions and cobras. Regardless, as a living creature this snake deserves more than being treated as trash, as a discardable life form. To the public, rattlesnake species may not be charismatic like pandas, dolphins, or chimpanzees, but they do play a vital role as actors in our local ecology, from woodlands to grasslands to deserts. Without them, rodents of all kinds could overrun the state.

As a coda to this incident, I messaged celebrated journalist Herb Caen at the SF Chronicle, in the spirit of public service, to make him aware that a person had released a rattlesnake in a Castro bar. Since it’s something he couldn't fact-check easily, or perhaps because it is too unbelievable even for him in this city, his staff never contacted me, nor did it ever show up in one of his columns. Perhaps he didn’t want to spark anxiety among bar patrons. Or maybe he didn’t want his readers to suspect him of making up a tall tale.                    

J. J. Hillard is a Northern California writer of fiction and nonfiction stories, as well as short screenplays. Many of these are inspired by his personal experiences, biology education, and travels. He enjoys chronicling the changes in human behavior and social relationships that result from advances in science and technology. When not writing, he finds reading histories, watching films, and gardening as creative ways to procrastinate. This is his first publication in a literary magazine.