Baturday News is a weekly blog written by Rachael, a soon-to-be high school student and Save Lucy volunteer. Rachael’s interest in bats was sparked by the big brown bats that used the outside of her former home for a winter roost. Rachael has been writing the Baturday News for three years

Hi everyone! I hope you had a good week. I enjoyed my last week of summer vacation by sleeping late and shopping. I will be starting high school next week. While I’m excited about being in high school, I am going to miss sleeping until noon (sometimes even later!).

I was talking to a family friend a little while ago and he was telling me about his trip to Bracken Cave in Texas. He and another friend are photographers for the Nature Conservancy. They went to Bracken Cave last year to take pictures and video of the bats for a Nature Conservancy article. He took the video and our other friend took the photographs. I wish I could have been there! It must have been amazing!

He told me all about sitting outside the cave waiting for the bats to come out for the night. He said that when the bats all start flying out of the cave, there are so many of them that you can feel the wind caused by their wings. He watched for hours while between 15 and 20 million Mexican free-tailed bats flew out of the cave.

The Nature Conservancy article tells about how a development company wanted to build a neighborhood close to the cave, so the Nature Conservancy and Bat Conservation International worked to save the cave. Luckily they were successful, so the bats are now safe. If you want to read the article, you can read it here. Another article is here.  And, you can see some of the amazing pictures that were taken here.

If any of you are ever in the San Antonio area, please go see the bats. I hope I’ll get to go there one day! I hope you all have a great Labor Day weekend and have a fun week!