Cousins and "Bats"

Mira and Jacob were at CNZ for a few days, and they came up to Austin for 1 night only. We were able to squeeze in Dairy Queen, Cousins Pizza, and the latest night of my children's lives going downtown to see the spectacular event of 1.5 million Mexican free-tail bats emerge at dusk to blanket the sky as they head out to forage for food. Except they didn't do that. I digress.

First up, Nana let us know that she would be at Dairy Queen in 20 minutes. That was all the advance warning we needed.



Next up, our beloved Saturday night tradition of Cousins Pizza! (This time, though, we finally successfully achieved a separate kids and adults table, hallelujah!)

Somehow, my kids found out about the most spectacular and unusual tourist attraction in Austin, Texas, and had been begging for an opportunity to see "the bats." (To their credit, it's a really neat experience...usually.) I suggested that we do it together when we had potentially more interested parties. So, off to downtown Austin we headed, WAY past bedtime, for the promise of a cloud of hundreds of thousands of Mexican free-tail bats emerging from under Congress Avenue Bridge as they begin their nightly search for grub.

The bats don't usually come out until after sunset. So, we set up camp and waited.

And we waited.

And waited.

And the sun kept on setting; the sky kept getting darker. We certainly saw some bats emerge, but it was no sensation as the crowd was expecting.

Aunt Syssa, and the magic of shadow puppets, helped us find our bat, and we eventually headed home, disappointed (albeit with great company).

It was quite a late night for everyone involved (presumably, I suppose, the bats as well).