We hung out at Uncle Craig’s house in the morning and then when in to town to take Uncle Evil to lunch. We went to a mostly authentic Mexican restaurant that Uncle Evil likes. Corwin ate well but Alice and Charles didn’t much like the food. After that we hit a park for a while, until it was time for Uncle Evil to go back to work. Uncle Evil spent most of his time demonstrating the offensive capabilities of various native plants.
The evening big adventure was meeting Blaine and family for dinner and then going down to Town Lake to watch the bats come out. It was interesting and all of the kids had a good time. After the guide warned us to not stare up open mouthed because bats poop on the fly, Alice proceeded to do just that in order, she claimed later, to show others what to not do. Fortunately Alice wasn’t hit.
There were a lot of bats, a claimed population of 1 million. It wasn’t initially impressive with one or two streams of bats coming out, but they just kept coming. It wasn’t long before the eastern sky looks like it has gobs of drifting smoke in it off to the horizon, all of which are really groups of bats. The first wave is out of sight long before the last wave takes to the skies. Our guide told us that the colony is 90% pregnant female bats, with a few token males who are sent out first to see what kind of predators might be lurking (just like penguins).
We hit a Starbucks afterwards for snack and Alice was bizarrely contrary in refusing to tell Mom what she wanted as a snack until Mom threatened no snack at all, to which Alice replied “Oh, all right, I will tell you”.
We had a great time; all of the kids were so well behaved and ours had so much fun. They’re still talking about the bats and the swan.
