I'm not great with sheds, but these scales sure look coarse
We flipped this mom and baby on a cool rainy day 1/29/2023. Baby looked to be a neonate. Photo by: D. Newman
The poor quality of the shed made it difficult to count scales precisely but their small size, round shape, clear ventral/dorsal color difference and lack of striping lead me to believe this is rubber boa.
Edit: yeah I was dumb on that one. The high scale count and lack of striping threw me off, and what I was thinking of as a ventral/dorsal color difference is really a ventral + lateral / dorsal color difference. I think it has to be gopher snake.
Deceased :( one of my chickens was standing evilly over the body when I found it... although I highly doubt the chicken actually killed it.
When I first started working at a new job in the El Dorado Hills Business Park in 1997, I would CAREFULLY wander around the undeveloped areas of the Business Park looking for wildlife to photograph. Almost immediately I realized that those areas were very heavily populated by Northern Pacific Rattlesnakes.
Many were almost completely hidden in the tall dry grass, as shown in the first photo.