Los Altos Hills has more than 8,000 residents.
One of them is a furry, shy, bi-pedal creature named Wildflower Begonia Bigfoot. As her last name may suggest, she is indeed part of the infamous Bigfoot family.
Bigfoot currently lives in a ramshackle shack along Buena Vista Drive, which she said offers respite from busy Bay Area life. She moved from her parents’ house near Sherlock Court – a choice her father made because he “loves Sir Arthur Conan Doyle” – about 50 years ago. While she’s currently 225 years old, she said in human years, she’s about 25 years old.
“I’m still figuring out who I want to be and what I want to do with my life, you know?” Bigfoot explained. While she’s not currently employed – the Bigfoot job market is just as bad as the human one – she said she spends her time helping out her neighbors whenever she can.
Homeschooled for most of her life, Bigfoot said her favorite thing to do as a child was explore Foothills Nature Preserve. In the 1920s, she even joined in on some of the classes Josephine Duveneck held at Hidden Villa. Those were her fondest memories, she said, because that’s when she first started feeling accepted.
“You know, back then I was much shorter. Less hairy. But even though I looked different than the human kids, they didn’t really care. They could tell I loved the environment and was eager to learn more about nature, so they let me stay,” Bigfoot said with a smile.
Although she said she and her family have been largely accepted by those in the Los Altos and Los Altos Hills communities who are aware of her and her family’s existence, she said that the path to acceptance was far from breezy.
“It was fuzzy there for a while,” she said.
Bigfoot colonies, which range from five to 10 footsies (as they call themselves) per colony, are docile, Bigfoot said. While there have been a number of self-proclaimed Bigfoot hunters who have tried to track Wildflower and her family members down, she said her neighbors in town often give them misinformation and protect the family’s whereabouts.
“There was definitely an uptick in hunters around the time my Uncle Bob was caught sauntering near the Klamath River in the Patterson-Gimlin film,” she shook her head in disapproval. “Grandpa Big Foot really tore him a new one after that. Wait, can I say that?”
But since then, she’s grown close with her Los Altos Hills neighbors. While many of them still don’t know she exists, she said she’s OK being relatively unknown. While she attends city events from the shadows – she said she’ll be in attendance (from afar) at the Hoppin’ Hounds Biscuit Hunt with her pet Chupacabra – she said she looks forward to all the local traditions.
“I hope to stay here, in my home, for as long as I can,” she said.
If you’ve gotten this far, you’ve probably realized what day it is, and that this is an April Fools joke. The Bigfoot family does not exist… Or does it?
