Last night, Neighbor Kendall found a lurker on his front steps:
I came home from picking my daughter up from soccer around 6 pm and found this little baby on our front steps on the North Slope. We are aways away from any shrubbery so I’m not sure how she got here. But she climbed/slithered up several of our front steps. Some research indicates she’s a juvenile gopher snake. There’s no rattle. There must’ve been a hatching nearby. I wonder if other folks are seeing these little guys around? Super cute!
Let’s zoom and enhance for a closer look:
Yikes!
Bernalwood 
Fresh meat delivered to your door
You can drop her off at my place, we’ve got a bit of a vole problem here.
Kendall’s snake is one of the few left in our neighborhood. Up here at the top of the hill there used to be two beautiful six-foot gopher snakes until someone’s dog got to them and chewed them to pieces. Now we have nothing but gophers up here. I wish there was a way we could let dog lovers (I like them too) know that their animals are capable of doing harm to the environment.
P.S. There are no native venomous snakes in Bernal, or in San Francisco for that matter.
I saw one of these guys on my street when I was gardening. Hope the hawks don’t get to them!
Put it in a garden…..we need them to get the gophers!!!
I usually find garter snakes in my garden, or in my house (when one of my cats brings them in). I’ve not seen a gopher snake. I always consider them a omen of a healthy habitat!
we had either that snake or one of the same variety hanging out by our recycling bins up on powhattan about a week and a half ago!
We had a similar variety I think a year ago under our front steps!
Last weekend, we saw 2 pretty larger gopher snakes on Bernal Hill, near the road. They may have even been mating…So, they’re out there – trying to populate and get those varmints!
Two days ago on bernal hill I saw a baby gopher snake slithering on the cement path and shortly later almost crapped my pants when I encounter a 6 foot one sun bathing on the rocks!