Sunday, September 11, 2005
To the Bat Cave!
Ever seen Dirty Jobs on The Discovery Channel? Each week, host Mike Rowe takes on some of the world's grimiest, nastiest and grossest jobs. This week, he was a bat biologist at Bracken Cave, home to the world's largest bat colony. The cave is just north of here, and I went to see the nightly bat emergence last year. It was hot, buggy and smelly -- and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. You sit in complete silence and utter stillness staring down at the cave opening (like an amphitheatre) until a "scout bat" comes out of the cave with a delicate flutterflutterflutter. Then in just a minute, a black tornado of bats swirls out of the opening and it sounds like waves crashing on the shore. The bats are all around, but they don't come near you; they don't even disturb a leaf on a tree. It's absolutely fascinating.
# posted by Peggy @ 6:06 PM 
