Release the Bats!

I have written about the ghost-town of Ruby before, but failed to produce any photos of the bats that live there. The bats migrate from Mexico and live in old mine-shafts in the ghost town, a few miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. Some 'bat experts' estimate there are upwards of a million bats in the mine shaft. Every night for several months the bats exit the mine shaft right on sunset to go feed. Slowly the bats start to come swirling up out of the shaft, until 1000s upon 1000s flock out creating a gust of wind. Occasionally the odd bat loses its way (if not being picked off by a hawk), hit something and stuns itself, then regains composure. The whole process takes about 30 minutes before all the bats have exited. Sundog, the caretaker of Ruby (I'll get to a separate post on him one day) harvests the bat poop in the mine shaft, otherwise known as 'guano'.







And in fitting tribute, here's the Birthday Party circa 1982 doing 'Release the Bats'...