Jun 16 2009
Austin Bat Colony
I arrived in Austin, Texas this week for the American Society of Engineering Educators (ASEE) conference. It is interesting that an unintended consequence of engineering design, the Congress Street Bridge, has resulted in one of Austin’s favorite tourist attractions, the Mexican free-tail bat colony.
Last night, Elena, the professor from Notre Dame who helped me write our paper we are presenting here, Camilla, her beautiful 4 month old daughter and I walked down to the bridge to see the spectacle. We really didn’t know what to expect, but were quite impressed.
We arrived at sundown, and a large crowd of people had gathered to watch. We waited for what seemed to be 15-20 minutes then slowly, a stream of bats emerged from beneath the opposite end of the bridge. It was dark enough that we could barely see them against the trees, but when they headed out into the open sky, it looked like a long, streaming cloud of black.
Edit: More information about the history of the bats is here. I hope to find some bat t-shirts today.
3 responses so far
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that is vaery cool dad. we lost Thomas in town.
love Emily
You lost Thomas? Did you find him again?
Yes we did .he wus tierd. he wus sleeping on the cowh