Go batty.

I have written a little about bats in a previous post (see here). Today I am going to write about them again, and not just because this weekend is Austin’s 8th Annual Bat Fest (although the timing is pretty good for that).

In case you are not aware, the Ann Richards Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin, Texas is home to the largest urban colony of bats in North America. At sunset from spring to fall, you can see as many as a million (or more) bats leave in unison to fly down the Colorado River (Lady Bird Lake). They look like choreographed black smoke, flitting and dipping as they consume tons of mosquitoes and other insects. It is quite a sight, and one that attracts thousands of tourists every year. It is only fitting that there is a festival in honor of the bats.

I mention in the aforementioned post that to me bats are fascinating. I would not call them “cute” per se, but they serve an important role in our ecosystem (did I mention they eat mosquitoes?). Not only did I encounter them in my hotel sink in Nicaragua, and flying from beneath a bridge in Texas, but I have seen them in a place one might more naturally expect: a cave.

When in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico several years ago, my then-boyfriend and I went to explore a cenote (sen-NOTE-ay). A cenote is basically an inverted cave or a sinkhole, that connects to groundwater. It is an underground cave with freshwater, so you can swim around, snorkel, and even walk around where the water isn’t too deep. We paid the modest fee to enter this particular cenote and climbed down a rather rickety ladder contraption. The water was deep where we entered, so we swam around, coming to the other side where we could stand up and walk. My boyfriend was walking ahead into another chamber of the cave when I spotted something hanging from the ceiling. It took me a while to figure out they were bats because they were very small, not what I had seen in books or on TV. I called out, “Hey, there’s baby bats hanging out over here.” And just like that, whoosh! A huge herd/flock/bevy/whatever of bats came flying out of a hole in the ceiling of the cave. I wasn't scared, for whatever reason. They didn’t make any noise. All I could hear was the flutter of their wings as they circled in a figure eight formation above me. I just stood there, still as could be, hand over my mouth in awe, trying not to make a sound. It was amazing.

I know there are many of you out there who are freaked out by bats. You don’t want anything to do with them. They scare you because you’ve heard they have rabies or they will get tangled in your hair. Maybe they seem like rodents with wings. Maybe you’re afraid they will turn you into a vampire. But there are times when traveling presents you with the truth and shows you how different something is in its natural environment. Sometimes something you fear is just something to marvel. This was not a bat flying around the attic of a farmhouse. These were not two dehydrated and sleepy bats hanging out in a hotel sink. What I saw in that cenote was a colony of bats that lived there. They slept, ate, and raised babies there. I was the interloper, not them. And I had to be thankful to those wordless hosts. Because it was quite a show.