COMAL COUNTY, Texas — They are the things of horror movies, yet so fascinating people flock to see them. Every night as the sun begins to set, somewhere between 15 to 20 million Mexican Freetail bats emerge from Bracken cave on a nightly routine.
The cave was discovered in the 1800's and bats had already colonized in it. They show up every spring around mid-February to March and stay, typically until around Thanksgiving or the first cold snap, then migrate back to Mexico.
"This is the largest bat colony, not just in Texas or the United States, but the largest bat colony of any type in the entire world," Bat Conservation International Director Fran Hutchins said.
Bracken Cave has also become a maternity colony for the bats. Every year millions migrate here just to give birth. The bats have used this cave so long, Hutchins said the guano is more than 100' deep.
In fact, during the Civil War, confederate troops guarded the cave because the guano was used for the salt peter and nitrites to make gun powder. After the war a shaft was dug so workers could harvest the guano to be used as fertilizer for cotton and other crops grown by area farmers.
Now a whole new commercial venture is run from the property: the bat emergence.
More than 100 thousand people a year pay roughly $30 to sit quietly on the benches and rocks and wait until they begin to fly out.
It starts with just a few darting in and out of the entrance, to become this full blown tsunami of millions of wings and bodies stream into the sky. There are so many "they actually show up on doppler radar, like a cloud" Hutchins said.
"A life altering experience," Ted Dick said, who flew in with his triplet daughters from Phoenix Arizona just to watch the bat emergence.
Dick said they have a cave there where about 10,000 bats live and emerge nightly, but this he said "is something you don't get to see all the time."
One night, I took my three kids with me, so they could see something most people never will, and they were completely fascinated. After watching for an hour and a half or so, we got up to walk to the car.
As we turned around, the sky and clouds were a beautiful red, orange and yellow backdrop as millions of bats continued flying like a steady black river, heading south where Hutchins said they eat about 150 tons of insects each night.
The bats wait until the sun begins to rise, divebomb back into Bracken Cave, rest and prepare to do the same thing each night.
If you have not seen the nightly emergence, I highly encourage you to do so. It's something to see! If you want to make a reservation, or just get more information, click here.