Bats!

Austin's famed Congress Avenue "Bat Bridge" houses "the largest urban bat colony in the world". Quite a claim to fame. So, we were in- we wanted to see it while in Austin this time. (As a side note- we wanted to see it last time we were there in August but didn't make it. Connor made this his choice to see given the choice between this and the Albuquerque Hot Air Balloon Fiesta that I had planned to catch on my drive over from Tucson to Austin. I'm actually glad for the bat bridge choice as Albuquerque was a lot further of a drive and more out of my way than I thought- a 7 hour drive!).

So, we went to see the bats last Friday night as part of our "Trailer Crawl" outing. My sister Laura and I took the 2 older kids (my Connor and her 2-year-old Olivia while her husband watched the twins and Amelia- he was brave!). Austin has another surprising claim to fame in their food trailers- they're quite gourmet and very popular. We made a progressive dinner of it starting with Moroccan Burgers- very yummy. Then crepes (I love crepes- I guess I'm a frenchie at heart), a tasty taco from another trailer and finished with a big rattlesnake donut from this fancy exclusively donuts trailer. It was definitely the kids' favorite with a coiled foot-long gummy rattler on the top!

Between the trailer hopping, at about dusk, we made our way to the Bat Bridge. We parked at the newspaper parking lot and headed to the park staging area which had signs posted about the bats. Very interesting- apparently these bats come from Mexico and the mamas come to the Austin bridge to have their young. There are some 1.5 million bats under there. It was hard to believe they were all under there as we waited in eery near silence because we didn't hear or see anything but we certainly smelled something-  bat dung, pee yew! Between complaining (thank you Connor) about the smell, the kids played in the dirt (there was a jogging path under the bridge area), checked out the other kids and waited for the main attraction.



This is the view we had of the bridge as darkness fell.



So dusk finally came and we started to hear squeaks of bats waking up. Then streams of bats came flying out. They came out very fast, so fast that we had a hard time seeing them. If you could see wind blowing, that's what it looked like. Connor looked and said he didn't see anything. He was getting really frustrated and said "mom, I don't see any bats...there aren't any bats...I don't believe in bats!"

This is what we expected to see and nothing was what we actually saw.





I thought it was pretty funny that he was getting so worked up but I tried to squelch my gaffaws since he was obviously irritated. He wanted to leave seeing that he didn't see anything. Then I got the idea to go on top of the bridge (you can see from underneath or on top) so up the stairs we went. We went to an area where lots of people were (thought that a good bet) near a street light and eureka! We saw BATS!! They were easy to see streaming in the artificial light. Connor was now a believer :)