Exploring Bat Maternity Centers

RV park in Arizona

We have a problem with bats.  Actually, bats have a problem with us. We need bats because they are necessary for plentiful crops and our food supply. A bat eats 3000 bugs per night and the things they eat – mosquitos, larvae, worms, and other bugs - are harmful to crops and humans. Losing one bat is significant, but we are losing millions.

Due to global warming bats are migrating north earlier every year. Too early for their food supply, insects, to be either hatched or large enough to sustain them. Later In the summer, when the insect population Is highest, there are fewer bats.  The bat/insect ratio is out of balance.  If bat arrival continues to be out of sync with the hatching of crop pests, there will be dire consequences for farmers and our food supply. 

While exploring caves in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona over the past month we learned a lot about bats and their importance to the environment and people.  Extraordinary care is taken to protect bats living in these caves.  When the bats inhabit the caves, they are off limits to people.  If you are wearing shoes that have been in other caves within the past 10 years, the shoes must be cleaned with alcohol.  This is done to prevent contaminating the cave with a fungus that causes "White Nose Syndrome."  WNS occurs when the fungus grows on the nose of the bat and causes enough irritation to interrupt hibernation.  The constant awakening throughout the winter causes the bat to use up its fat stores before winter is over.  The bats die of malnutrition. 

After spending January and February in Alabama we went to Austin, Texas. Austin has an RV park right downtown (weird, I know) that is ancient and run-down but had the amenities we needed and made most things we wanted to see within walking distance. We enjoyed the farmers’ market- bought local pecans - and the Lady Bird Johnson Park by the river. Steve fixed Indian food for a niece and her husband and son who live nearby.

Downtown Austin, Texas

Downtown Austin park

Old tree in the park.

This is the ancient RV park in Downtown Austin and we bought smoked pecans from the farmers' market

Yes, some one has been living here for a long time. It has electricity!

Fun to see family!

From Austin we made a short drive to the Texas hill country (one of few places in Texas that has good scenery) to see Cave Without a Name. Texas has over 5000 known caves. Millions of years ago a big part of Texas was under water, so it is possible to see the remains and fossils of clams and other sea creatures in the layers of rock in the cave. In Cave Without a Name there is still water dripping from the ground above so many speleothems (formations such as stalactites, stalagmites, popcorn formations, soda straws, etc.) are still forming

Drapes

In Cave Without a Name

More Cave Without a Name

While in Austin we spent a day at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library. This is the third Presidential library we have visited.  Each has provided excellent history lessons and reminded us of the many traumatic times our country has survived.  What's going on today isn't too bad by comparison.  We shall survive.

We were reminded of Lady Bird Johnson’s efforts to clean up our highways and parks from litter and signage and trash.  Those efforts did not take root in much of west Texas.  I've never seen so much discarded plastic being blown by the wind.  If there wasn't oil under the ground this part of the US would be desolate.  I'm amazed that we fought a war with Mexico to steal this land. 

Replica of LBJ's oval office

My mom collected tea cups and saucers just like Lady Bird did.

Lady Bird's office

I was not a happy camper during our few days in southern New Mexico because the climate in New Mexico this time around was not pleasant. First, it was cold and second everything, including the sky, was gray and brown. And third, we were in the windstorm called the Bomb Cyclone that was devastating the mid-West.  Being in an RV when the wind blows hard is scary.  The whole thing shakes and the canvas toppers (covers for the slides) flap violently.  To prevent the wind from tearing the toppers off the coach we pulled in the slides and lived in a much smaller motorhome.  Just to add to the mood, there was a tornado warning.  If the tornado had been close by, we could not have seen it through the rain or heard it above the 60-mph wind.

It was my fault that we were in New Mexico again. I wanted to see Carlsbad Caverns as I had heard my parents talk about it. They had visited it in the early 50’s. Last year we missed it because its elevators were under repair and climbing up 750 feet by stairs did not appeal to us.

Carlsbad Caverns are huge. The Big Room, which is larger than 2 US Capital buildings put together is awe-inspiring. By the time we were finished, we had walked nearly 4 miles.  And there was more to explore if you were willing to climb, crawl, wriggle through tight spaces and get dirty.

At Carlsbad there is an amphitheater at the entrance.  In the summer, people will sit there at sunset to watch thousands of bats exit the cave to feed. One bat will eat 3000 bugs per night.

Here's where thousands of bats exit every night at Carlsbad Caverns

In Arizona we went to see the Kartchner Caverns in the Kartchner State Park. It’s prettier here because of the hills nearby and the mountains in the distance. Kartchner Caverns is much smaller than Carlsbad but beautiful and worth seeing if you are in the area.  The cave was discovered by Randy Tuffs.   When he was a young boy Randy saw a hole in the side of a hill that he thought might lead to a cave, but he didn't explore it at that time. He came back with his college roommate seven years later and they went into the hole. They found a smaller hole where air was blowing out (there was a low-pressure weather system coming through) and they knew it meant there was a larger space below. They enlarged the hole from grapefruit size to just large enough to squeeze through.  They wanted to prevent the general public from destroying the cave, so they kept it secret for 4 years, coming back to eventually explore 2 ½ miles of the cave.

The cave was in land belonging to the Kartchner family. Mr. Kartchner was 86 years old when they told him about the cave. He even went down into it to see why they were excited. He had 12 children and they had 10-12 children each, so he had 94 grandchildren!! And they all kept it secret. Eventually they sold the land to the Arizona State Park so it could be preserved and opened to the public. 37 million dollars were spent over 10 years getting it ready viewing.   The park has a very nice Visitor’s Center, educational programs and videos.  Walkways with handrails were built to make visiting the cave safe and to protect it.  The cave is alive as the various formations within the cave are still growing.  Multiple doors throughout the cave protect its wet, humid environment from the dry desert air.  If the cave dries out it will die.  It's fascinating to realize that there are surely undiscovered caves all over the world. It is like another world below us waiting to be discovered.

At Kartchner Caves there is one area of the cave that is closed to the public from April to October to protect the bats who are there to have their babies and raise their young. They also clean your shoes with alcohol before entering in order to prevent “white nose disease”, the disease that is killing bats.

The bats in the southern U.S. spend the winter in South America. Then they come north to have their babies. They hang upside down and birth “pups” that are about an inch long -which would be like humans birthing 3-year-old toddlers. We could see their “maternity center” in the Kartchner Caverns. There were also piles of black guano that does not smell because they are insect eating bats. Fruit eating bats evidently have a bad smelling guano. 

It’s been a “batty” time. 

A pic I borrowed from the internet

Edited by Steve!