One morning, a woman goes to work in Austin, Texas. Suddenly she has to stop. She discovers a black spot on the wall of the house.
She takes a closer look and realizes that this spot is trembling. A bat is clinging to the bare wall. There is even a second bat sitting above it.
The trembling is understandable, because a cold front has just blown over Austin.
Help from an expert
The woman informs her colleague Mandy, who works as an animal rescuer.
Mandy takes a quick look at the two bats on the wall of the house and then immediately informs Austin Bat Refuge.
They know all about bats in distress here. A short time later, employee Lee Mackenzie arrives on site to help.
Lee has brought an extendable ladder almost seven meters long – just long enough to reach the top of the two bats.
An examination shows that the animals are hypothermic but otherwise in good health.
Inadequate protection
Lee has a suspicion as to why the bats chose this particular wall in the cold.
He believes that they stopped off here on their way from Kansas or Oklahoma to Mexico and were then surprised by the cold.
The guests are not familiar with the places where the bats native to Austin seek shelter from the cold, for example in the bat roosts under the highway bridges.
In such cases, non-local bats choose the south walls of buildings. There they are at least protected from the north wind.
In the current temperatures, however, this protection is not sufficient.
On to Mexico
Now the two hypothermic bats can recover at the Austin Bat Refuge.
Here they are not only safe from the cold, but also find a richly laid table with tasty mealworms – a real bat’s favorite food.
As soon as they have recovered, Lee will take them to one of the bridges where other bats can be found.
Together they can then all fly on to warm Mexico.
Source: The Dodo
