People laughed back in the 1990s, when land conservationist J. David Bamberger, one of the co-founders of Church’s Fried Chicken, decided to build a bat cave on his ranch near Johnson City.
The bats, they said, would never come. But Bamberger, now a spry and enthusiastic 97, remained optimistic. Even if the bats didn’t move into the three-lobed habitat built into the side of a hill on the ranch, he said at the time, he could store “a hell of a lot of wine there.”
The Mexican free-tail bats did eventually show up, and they’ve returned every year since to Bamberger’s delight. Thermal imaging scans show that as many as 400,000 of the fuzzy, half-ounce critters pack shoulder to shoulder inside the cave during the summer. The population dwindles to 3,000 to 15,000 in winter.
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On July 18, the public will get a chance to watch the show when the ranch hosts a dinner and bat emergence event. Tickets are $150 here. Chef Kristin Parma will cook dinner.
I’ve watched the emergence several times. Bamberger and I are friends, and I wrote a book about him, “My Stories, All True,” in 2020. To sit on a picnic table and see that tornado of flying mammals swirl out of the chiroptorium, as Bamberger calls their man-made residence, makes you appreciate the mosquito-munching mammals even more. Bats gobble up tons of insects – including pesky mosquitos – each night around the country, saving farmers billions in crop damage and pesticide use.
