The American Spectator

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Another Perspective

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WELL, NOT REALLY. SINCE YOU DIDN'T bother to read the fine print on your land deed, and the real estate agent didn't bother to tell you, nor did the building contractor who also knew (but then again, it's none of his business) : it turns out that the rancher (you remember him, the one who unloaded the water rights when he subdivided) retained the mineral rights beneath your twenty acres of paradise. You may get a polite letter in the mail from an energy company like Arco or Amoco informing you that a drilling rig will be erected in an empty pasture down the road, and just outside the legal perimeter of the 100-yard buffer zone between your property and the rig. The letter tells you that this will probably only be temporary (a few months) as the energy company's geologists study the feasibility of tapping a possible natural gas reservoir deep under your house. Don't worry, with modern technology they can go at this "laterally" from that distant rig site. The energy company will regret any inconvenience to you, such as that ugly drilling rig and accompanying trailers and trucks that will mar your view of the mountains. Also the annoying grating noise, and all the dust the trucks will raise going up and down your unpaved subdivision access road. Not wishing to belittle their own employees, the company letter doesn't mention the handful of hardhats who will be on site everyday. "Roughnecks" have a scruffy, tattooed look about them that makes you think that this may be their first good job since being released from prison in Arkansas a month ago. Folks don't call them "oilfield trash" for nothing. If the company is prospecting for coal-bed methane, the end result could mean a pumped-out aquifer and your well going dry. Though this is unlikely because the legalities are rather complicated.

Which is why you go visit the shoulder-shrugging young attorney again. He tells you that lots of new folks living in western Colorado and near Bozeman, Montana, are going through the same thing lately, so you're not alone. He advises you to join the new Homeowners Association lawsuit (that he is filing) against the energy company, and to start attending the weekly townhall meetings related to this controversy. Congressman Such-and-Such will be there next week, and you can join your neighbors in bending his ear all about it. You're starting to get nostalgic for your former California life. The comforts of stringent rules and regulations. You even miss the California Coastal Commission.

The following evening as you're climbing into your SUV to go town to attend your first meeting, you hear an unearthly scream. It's your wife, and she tells you that she just observed a large rattlesnake crawl under the deck. The meeting is in twenty minutes, but your wife insists -- rather hysterically -- that you kill this dangerous snake before you leave. You remember that when the real estate agent told you about all those wonderful "wildlife viewing opportunities," he didn't mention rattlesnakes. You also remember that you don't own a gun.

Then it hits you. You'll call the neighbors. Being good neighbors, they will help you. They have lots of guns. Remember? They shot your dog.

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