San Antonio, Texas - For someone who was nurtured in humility and tempered with the sense of reserve; stereotypic, Texas hubris/vanity have always rubbed me the wrong way. Still, you can find those people wherever you go. Hoosiers, Southern Californians, especially New Yorkers can be noxious; braggadocio doesn’t observe borders so it’s not just Texas. San Antonio has great appeal and the people I’ve met are just happy to be here. So am I; it's just difficult saying nice things about Texas or Texans without a disclaimer.
Yesterday my kids took me to Bracken Cave to see Mexican Free Tailed Bats emerge at dusk, on their nightly food foray. It’s not like I’ve never seen bats emerge but it’s been a while. It’s way-cool when you think you know something and discover how much there is yet to learn. Bats have always been fun to watch, incredibly interesting creatures; not so much when they fly around inside your house at night but outside, where they prefer to be, bats are special. Bracken Cave is the largest bat colony in the world; 10 million of those flying mammals hanging upside down from the ceiling of that cave. In a few weeks the number will double as they are all pregnant females, soon to give birth. This time of year males live in bachelor colonies while the expecting mothers occupy maternal residences.
The property is owned and maintained by a bat conservancy. Only 25 people are allowed per night for the evening show. Our docent explained how bats crowd into tight places, how the concentration of warm bodies insure high temperatures, not having to spend precious energy keeping warm. Conserving energy is a high priority for small mammals, something that tends to elude us with our pantries full of high quality, energy rich food. Once the babies arrive, they are all deposited in a great nursery, on the ceiling of a different chamber, 500 babies per square foot. She only has an hour or so to familiarize the location, the scent of her baby and the frequency of its call before she has to go out for food. Finding your peanut size baby in the dark, amongst 10 million other babies is incredible but they do it every day. They are mammals, with hair, and they nurse their young with mother’s milk. Then they are returned to their special spot on the nursery ceiling and Mother heads out for another night on the wing.
The numbers are mind boggling. It takes nearly 4 hours for 10 million bats to vacate the cave. They circle up and out of the cave entrance, a limestone sink hole that opens into an underground network of caverns. It reeks with ammonia so toxic it would kill predators that venture there, including humans. Hungry bats fly off to feed on insects that would otherwise destroy crops, to the tune of 150 tons of insects per night. The stream of flesh and bone fills the air just a few feet overhead, so quiet you wouldn’t notice if they weren’t your reason to be there. At first light they will return, taking several hours to negotiate the entrance and shoulder to shoulder placement on the chamber ceiling. They figure only about 40% of the new baby bats will survive infancy and the migration back to Mexico for the winter but the ones that do survive will live and reproduce for about 7 or 8 years. Last night the sky was overcast and the girls were a little late coming out. My camera does well in low light but shutter speed slows down so that catching bats in flight was not an option. The best I could do was a lot of dark, blurred streaks against the clouds. Not getting good photographs was eased by the fact that (batcon.org) website has great videos of both the cave and of bats coming and going.
We have been conditioned to believe in the sanctity of Human life but I don’t think it stops there. I believe life is precious, all life. If Human life is sanctified then so is all the rest; from Moss on a stone to Bluebonnets, to Live Oak Trees: to Butterflies and Humming Birds, to Salamanders, Bats and even us, even people. If there is such a thing as Providential Preference it is manifest in Photosynthesis, Respiration and Replication rather than a single species. I’m sure there are Texans, New Yorkers and run-away, narrow minds who cling to the myth. Such inflated egos have nowhere else to go that isn’t a terrible disappointment.
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