I was just finishing a post-swim coffee when Adam called me at the café: "I think there's a snake in the kitchen. And it might be a rattlesnake." He had been standing by the coffee maker when he heard what he described as a hiss coming from under the cabinets.

When I got home, Adam climbed up onto the island, inching toward the snake on his belly, so he could take a photo with his phone. You could make out eyes, but not much more—certainly not enough to determine whether it was a rattler. (And we had been Googling the relevant attributes.) I had the bright idea of using our real camera, including the flash.

I called Santa Barbara Animal Control, which said we're in the county's jurisdiction. Santa Barbara County Animal Control didn't open for another 45 minutes, so I left a message and Adam tried a pest-control company. They said to call Andy, the Wildlife Trapper. "I'll drop everything and be there in 20 minutes," he said. In the meantime, we were told to stand guard in case the snake decided to move somewhere else.
"That's a western rattlesnake," he said when he saw the photo. "I see five or six a year. They're extremely dangerous. If it bit you, you'd have about six hours to get treatment, but that's really painful and expensive. It costs like $100,000." We nodded along, even though it sounded like a fair amount, all in all. He explained that he was going to have to kill the snake, which he would hopefully do by shooting it in the head with a .22 caliber pellet rifle. "You have to be really sure it's dead," he said. "We eat them—"
"Oh, sure," Adam said. "It’s like eel at a Japanese restaurant!"
"—and once, after I killed one, I cut off the head and skinned it and put the meat in my bag and I could still feel it wiggling around in there."
As he lined up his shot, the snake rattled its tail. (Adam can now say he knows what that sounds like.) Andy fired the gun. "Got it! There's blood everywhere." After Andy turned to tell us something, however, the snake disappeared somewhere inside the cabinetry.
"I'm 99.9% sure it's dead, but we don't want to leave a dead animal here," said Andy. "The smell will be terrible. I’ve done so many dead-animal removals and I can tell by the smell whether it's a possum or a rat. For some reason snakes and rabbits are the worst." I think Adam and I might've been willing to put up with the rotting corpse if we could just get confirmation that it was, in fact, a corpse.

Andy drilled a hole into the cabinet wall for a better look. There was plenty of blood, but no clear trail—and no way it could've come in this way. "I think this rattlesnake came in through an open door," said Andy, vindication for those of us who weren't happy about several doors being left open the evening before. Andy kept inspecting the cabinetry, looking for pockets where the snake could be hiding, and carving holes. "I don’t want to stick my hand in, for obvious reasons."
After two hours of being here—and quite a bit of light carpentry—Andy found the snake. He couldn't see all of it, but he could see the rattle. Judging from the six rings, the snake was six years old. Andy grabbed what he called his bat tongs, most recently used for a bat extraction, to pull the snake out.
"SHIT! HE'S STILL ALIVE! FUCKER!" Andy reared back. "Pardon my language. Man, that was close." As he had grabbed at the snake, it had somehow coiled around and come toward him. "Oh my lord," said Andy, clearly pumped full of fear and adrenalin. "That was close. I need my rifle." Adam handed him a hoe-like tool, to pin the snake down, and the rifle. Andy shot the snake again. And again. “Blew its brains out there, for sure." Ten seconds later, he seemed to rethink his position. "And because this sucker's been such a pain in the ass, he gets one more.” Bam!

The snake was around a foot-and-a-half long. After giving us the photo op, Andy took the snake out to behead it. He came back a little jittery. I asked if he was still reeling from the adrenalin. "It tried to get me again!" he said. "I carefully dumped it out of the garbage bag and onto the ground, and it lunged around to attack one last time."
I hate killing animals, but this was clearly an extenuating circumstance. Many, many thanks to Andy!

P.S. Post-snake, Adam and I went to lunch at a restaurant where you're given a buzzer after ordering, to notify you when the food is ready. We got our drinks from the machine, along with napkins and condiments, and as we were heading through the crowded outdoor area, Adam turned to me and said, "You have the vibrator, right?"