Caught via a metal trap that snaps around his neck, ideally meant to kill quickly. Except that, he didn't die because it didn't get him square around the neck. So I watched as he was pulled out of the hole by Juvencio, the dogs watching and eyeing and wagging their tales. The gopher had attacked the tomato plants, burrowing and eluding execution attempts for almost a week.

"Look at his teeth," says Juvencio, and they are the size of my thumbnails, skinny and curving.

"Oliver!" he says, gesturing to their small rat terrior, "Come get it!"

Oliver does not know what to do. He cocks his head and steps backwards out of Juvencio's shadow and into the sunlight. "This dog--is lazy!" says Juvencio, moving his hand to gesture that it is Pepito's now. Pepito is big, seasoned, resourceful.

He bounds in, grabbing the gopher between his jaws and running to the end of a row of onions. The gopher does not try to escape. It is silent, the whole thing is fairly silent. Pepito gets a few mouthfuls of fur before I even see the gopher stop moving. Than it happens quickly, and within ten minutes there is nothing remaining. Nothing. The bones are eaten, I don't even see blood on the grass. I watch Pepito lift his head to unwind the intestines--they look like earthworms.

I fight nausea when I see the entrails, like smashed berries, spilling from the fur, but for someone who has never seen anything more than a bug or a trout killed, I think I do remarkably well. I tell myself it is natural, and that for the garden to grow, the gopher has to go...