Mexican free-tailed bats tending to Batworld Sanctuary. The Batworld Sanctuary is where Wally played a key role in Warwick’s rescue of free-tailed bats in Mexico. Their volunteers helped Mary sort out healthy bats and injured bats in need of serious medical attention.Bat World Sanctuary sent 12 bats to bring about 120 bats to Bat World Sanctuary. She made two round trips in time. They can treat injuries and provide care until they are ready to be released. (Photo: Courtesy of Batworld Sanctuary)
In Texas, this winter’s extreme weather created an unusual cold snap that some bats couldn’t handle. So Mary Warwick, Wildlife Director of the Houston Human Society, took action and saved nearly 1,600 Mexican flying foxes from hypothermia with the help of Batworld Sanctuary. Paloma from Living on Earth Her Bertrand tells her story.
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CURWOOD: This winter’s extreme weather has brought unusually cold weather to parts of Texas, with sub-zero temperatures in Houston. As Living on Earth’s Paloma Beltran learned from a local wildlife rehabilitator, some local wildlife, including bats, are too cold to cope unless they get help.
Warwick: Looking down, these bats look like big chunks of bark. They didn’t look like living organisms.
[MUSIC: Blue Dot Sessions, “Fission Forming,” Trailhead, Blue Dot Studios 2021]
Bertrand: A few days before Christmas, Mary Warwick was walking under Houston’s War Bridge and noticed hundreds of tiny Mexican flying foxes lying on the ground. It weighed only a few ounces and had fallen from the bridge above to the cold ground below.
Warwick: If you don’t know there’s a bat colony overhead, you might not even know there are bats.
Mexican free-tailed bats recovering from a Texas cold snap next to a blanket. (Photo courtesy of Mary Warwick)
Beltran: Mary Warwick is the Wildlife Director of the Houston Human Society and has partnered with an organization called Bat World Sanctuary to help hypothermic bats. I have already been vaccinated against rabies.
So she took action to care for the first 138 bats to come back to health.
[MUSIC: Blue Dot Sessions, “Night Light,” Nursery, Blue Dot Studios 2020]
Warwick: At the time, I didn’t really have anything. So I went back to the car, found the box with the other stuff, threw it away, got the Kleenex, put it back in the bottom of the box. And this was during the day and I put all the bats in the box. And the outside temperature was about 22 degrees at that point. So I put them in my seats, turned them around on the heat, and then drove to where I live, about 40 minutes away. At the beginning, I could see the little legs growing out, so that’s a good sign.
[BAT SFX]
Warwick: A wounded wildlife needs two things at once. They need heat support and hydration so they can’t use food in their intestines until they are warm and hydrated. A needle and syringe are used to apply subcutaneous fluid under the skin to keep you hydrated. Then you can start force feeding. Bats eat their wings, so they fly to catch insects. If you put a bowl of bugs in front of them, they won’t know what to do. Usually not the insects they eat, like mealworms. Therefore, it is necessary to force feed. Therefore, it can be very labor intensive.
Subzero temperatures in December 2022 caused a Mexican flying fox found at Houston’s Waugh Bridge to go into hypothermia, lose its grip from the bridge and fall to the ground. Some bats had to be placed in an incubator for recovery (pictured above). (Photo: Courtesy of Mary Warwick)
[MUSIC: Blue Dot Sessions, “Edge of the Woods,” The Caravan, Blue Dot Studios 2022]
Bertrand: The Houston Humane Society posted on social media that Mary was rescuing bats herself. But after that she was not alone for long.
Warwick: I think it’s one of the most organic things I’ve been involved with in a long time. Because when people started hearing that I picked up bats, they started going out and picking them up themselves. Can someone pick up Facebook messages like 50 bats, 20 bats, etc.? person or person. It was just the messiest.
[MUSIC: Blue Dot Sessions, “Edge of the Woods,” The Caravan, Blue Dot Studios 2022]
Warwick: When I had 100 or 200 or something like that, myself and the folks at Batworld could handle it. And on the second night we picked up 929 bats from another bridge. So the number of animals we have to care for has really increased. Therefore, it is impossible to force feed 929 bats and other bats.
[MUSIC: Blue Dot Sessions, “Night Light,” Nursery, Blue Dot Studios 2020]
About 1,500 bats were safely kept in several kennels in Mary Warwick’s attic until they recovered from hypothermic shock. (Photo: Courtesy of Mary Warwick)
Warwick: So we decided we needed to keep them warm and increase their metabolism to use glucose. It’s called dormancy, and it slows down your metabolism, so you’ll need to drink occasionally, but you’ll be fine without food.
[MUSIC: Blue Dot Sessions, “Night Light,” Nursery, Blue Dot Studios 2020]
Bertrand: Mary had about 1,500 recovering bats in a large kennel in her attic.
Warwick: They were there when I went to dinner with my family on Christmas Day. Their metabolism slowed down and they were not hibernating. They were still awake and chatting to each other like it was a pajama party. They were just there chatting, sometimes quieter, sometimes louder. It’s a small sound that sticks in your ears.
[Bat SFX]
An estimated 250,000 Mexican flying foxes call the bridges of Houston, Texas, home. (Photo: Ann Froschauer, USFWS, Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
Bertrand: After a few days recovering in the kennel in Mary’s attic, the bat wasn’t just chatting, it was flapping its wings, ready to be released.
Mary says this isn’t the first time bats have suffered cold weather in years, and it’s unlikely to be the last.
Warwick: This is the third time this has happened with bats since 2019. In 2022 there was another freeze. But trying to save lives at that point was very difficult. People died from that freeze. To be honest, I never even thought about bats. I was worried about her mother. And here it has already happened. And you know, it’s happening more and more often. And we know that hurricanes and large tropical storms can happen in the summer season, not just in the winter, and it can get worse. drown. So they are really hitting their limits now and all this has to do with climate change.
[MUSIC: Blue Dot Sessions, “Fern and Andy,” Love and Weasel, Blue Dot Studios 2017]
Bertrand: Thanks to Mary Warwick and a team of volunteers, more than 1,600 bats were saved from freezing to death in the recent cold snap. As climate change continues to bring unusually cold weather to Texas, this is the network of people the bats need to rely on again.
Houston Humane Society Wildlife Director Mary Warwick holds a Mexican flying fox recovering from the 2022 Texas winter freeze. (Photo: Courtesy of Mary Warwick)
[MUSIC: Blue Dot Sessions, “Fern and Andy,” Love and Weasel, Blue Dot Studios 2017]
Curwood: It’s living Paloma Beltran on Earth with Mary Warwick, Wildlife Director of the Humane Society of Houston. Mary To see a video of a bat rescued in her Warwick attic, visit her website at Living on Earth, loe.org.
Link
Learn more about the bats under the Wardrive Bridge
houston chronicle “Hundreds of (now frozen) Houston bats have been successfully released under Warbridge.”
Learn more about the Houston Humanitarian Society
Learn more about Batworld Sanctuary
Watch Mexican flying foxes recover in Mary Warwick’s attic
