I had forgotten how many of these guys there were around. Living in Japan, I never see squirrels, so I had kind of forgotten–but back here at home in the bay area, I am reminded all the time of the little critters and their antics. They tend to live in the large oaks that populate the area, skittering across telephone and power lines. Most of them the brown kind, pictured above right, but a percent of them jet black.

I took a recent walk over to the Stanford Shopping Center (Sigona’s fruits and See’s candies, if you must know), and was surprised by the new development. The first thing I noticed was that the vast, open fields along the banks of the San Fransquito Creek are now no longer open–a rather sizable housing project (see photo at left) has taken over the fields. Disappointing in many ways–I recall vividly riding my bicycle through the fields on my way to a part-time job I held at Green Library in high school, watching dozens of ground squirrels dart across my path every time I rode along the path to Sand Hill Road.

I have to wonder if the squirrels are still under the new homes, burrowing under the area as they have for decades despite endless attempts by the university to plow them under.

A lot of new construction there–a new retirement project is under construction now, apparently funded by Hyatt (the hotel people), units that will without doubt go for an incredibly high asking price.

Well, that’s just about par with the shopping center they’re being built across from. I didn’t check, but I’m fairly sure that McDonald’s is still in there, despite the center’s longstanding attempts to plow them under just like the squirrels. Mickey Dee’s doesn’t quite mesh well with Neiman-Marcus and Bloomingdale’s, I guess.

The walk back home was nice, and I will always have a soft spot for this neighborhood. From the air, it is a small carpet of green in an otherwise urban/suburban forest, so central to so much but at the same time as bucolic as you can get so close to the El Camino Real. Of course, when I grew up here, it was mostly retired seniors, but since the dotcom boom it has mostly been taken over by wealthy couples, and the houses almost all remodeled or rebuilt from the smaller suburban units to larger, plush homes.

Still, a very nice area, and I am glad to be back to visit, glad to be able to come back as often as I do.