Batwoman - Snap Classic

A woman in Texas takes animal rehabilitation to new heights when she brings over a thousand bats back from the dead in her own home. And a Snap producer reveals he owes a lot to one single hairy flying mammal. STORIES Batwoman A woman in Texas takes animal rehabilitation to new heights when she brings over a thousand bats back from the dead in her own home. Thank you, Mary Warwick, for sharing your story with us! Big thanks also to The Houston Humane Society, The TWRC Wildlife Center, and the Batworld Sanctuary in Texas – whose staff protect and rehabilitate bats, and provide education and training on the proper treatment of bats to people all over the US. Original score by Dirk Schwarzhoff, produced by Shaina Shealy, artwork by Teo Ducot. Bless the Bat Snap Producer, John Fecile, tells us how he got where is he today. Original score by Dirk Schwarzhoff, produced by John Fecile. Season 16 – Episode 48 - Snap Classic Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:08Glynn Washington?

  Okay. The perfect cup of coffee in those cheap ceramic mugs has a timing problem. Too hot, too hot, still too hot, then, there it is. That perfect sip. And then, too cold, too cold. And come on, it just got good. Wow. My Ember 3 mug lets me set the precise temperature I want for my coffee, for my tea, the Goldilocks zone, and locks it right there. So that first perfect sip can be the next sip, and the next, and that, that is a better morning. Why did I just find out about this? The Ember 3 mug, your coffee exactly as you left it.

• 0:53Glynn Washington?

  Discover the best deals happening now at ember.com/snap. Go to ember.com right now, and when you're asked where you heard about them, let them know it was Snap Judgment. That's ember.com/snap. What do you get for the person who says, "I don't need anything"? Nothing? Okay, put a bow on that. Because Shop brings a whole bunch of stores together at shop.com. Cookware, cakes, toys, high-tech, type in what you're looking for and search across stores at once. Find brands you love. Check out fast and track every order in one spot.

• 1:35Glynn Washington?

  Because somewhere in there is the thing that makes them go. That, that's what it is. That. And to celebrate the all-new shop.com, Shop is giving away $1 million in Shop Cash. That's Shop's rewards currency. 1,000 shoppers are each going to win $1,000 in Shop Cash, just in time for the holidays. Get something for the people on your list. And yes, you're allowed to put your own name on there. Enter to win the $1 million Shop Cash giveaway from now until November 1st. Just go to shop.com. There are so many ways to win. That's shop.com. Shopping designed around you. No purchase necessary.

• 2:19Glynn Washington?

  Restrictions apply. Official rules available at shop.com.

• 2:30Glynn Washington?

  Okay, so first you gotta understand. I'm chillin', chillin'. House sittin' for some fancy people. This beautiful, gorgeous estate like something out of a James Bond movie. Each of the bathrooms bigger than my entire apartment. And I'm king of this castle for two full weeks. All I gotta do is make sure nobody like me gets in here. Private movie theater, wine cellar, infinity pool. No secret layer worth its salt can be a secret layer without the infinity pool. So it's there. In the pool, I recline on the flotation device.

• 3:10Glynn Washington?

  The cocktail, shaken, not stirred, sweating in the cup holder. Even as nighttime descends upon the city below, I said I was chillin'. And then, then, this keening, chittering, clicking. A man-sized shadow, a specter, drops from the sky just above the far end of the pool. Terror. Icy terror. In the darkness, I see him gliding, gliding maybe two, three inches above the water, gliding directly toward me.

• 3:55Glynn Washington?

  Closer, closer, and I can't even scream as this shadow passes directly over my nose and then I'm under the water, failing, frantic, crazed, running for the house. More shadows fall from the sky. Blind fear, I dive, soaking wet into the house, kicking the door behind me. And the phone rings. I snatch it up like it's holy water. Hello, hello! Hi Glenn, hope you're enjoying the place. Just wanted to let you know, if you're lucky, a little after sunset, you might see the foxes. The what? The flying foxes.

• 4:39Glynn Washington?

  And it's taking me a while. I'm from Michigan. I know foxes don't fly. But the bats, the bats, they sometimes swoop down and drink from the pool. Some of them are just huge, they're super fun to see.

• 4:55Glynn Washington?

  Oh, um, I didn't notice. Thanks for letting me know. I'll be sure to look out for them. Sure, sure, sure.

• 5:04Glynn Washington?

  Well, today, on Snap Judgment, an exploration, a journey, a communion across space and time between species.

• 5:17Glynn Washington?

  From KQED and Snap Studios, we proudly present Batwoman. My name is Lynn Washington. If you have flying monsters drinking from your swimming pool, you might want to tell the houseguest about it first when you're listening to Snap Judgment.

• 5:41Glynn Washington?

  Now then, we begin with Mary Warwick. Mary, she'd been working at the Houston Humane Society Wildlife Center for years, treating sick animals, when a woman showed up at her doorstep with a shoebox full of bats.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  She's like, "Here's 10 bats, and I have no idea what to do."

• 6:02Speaker 02

  Mary also didn't know what to do. Actually, no one in Houston was rehabilitating bats at the time. But Mary had cared for all kinds of animals.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Owls, always squirrels and opossums.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  And she often records parts of those rescues on her phone to share with her followers.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  Hi, it's Mary. I'm out here on Galveston Island on a late Friday night, getting ready to release some opossums. Let's take the first one out, and you will hear them.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  She once rehabbed a duck named Woody, who lived in her bathtub for weeks. Then there was a hawk missing a beak that recuperated in her guest room. And at some point, she had a confiscated South American coati staying in her bathroom.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  I still have teeth marks in my glasses where she bit. I've brought home animals since I was a tiny, tiny kid. So it's just something in my DNA, I guess.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  So she took the box of bats, wild bats. They live in caves and under bridges and can carry rabies.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  But at the same time, you're in awe, like this, there's this flying mammal in your hands. And their ears are moving around back and forth, picking up stuff. And they have little scrunch noses that are constantly moving around and sniffing. They do a lot of like lick, lip licking. And then they chatter a lot. They're funny, like they're so small and really super cute.

• 7:29Speaker 02

  She started learning about wild bats, little by little. What was the most surprising thing you learned?

• 7:35Speaker 01

  How stinking cute they are.

• 7:38Speaker 02

  Mary rehabbed nearly all 10 of the bats. She returned them to the wild and went on with her life. Back to caring for possums and squirrels and less common animals, like a baby otter who was fished out of a ship channel by a tugboat operator.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Nobody else would go pick her up, so I went out and got her.

• 7:59Speaker 02

  She named the otter Tug and gave Tug antibiotics and bottle fed her until she died in Mary's bathtub.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  She was in a warm, safe place and was getting care. That made me feel better. But yeah, it was just devastating, extremely heartbreaking.

• 8:20Speaker 02

  But the loss didn't slow Mary down. She kept taking in stray animals.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  I love what I do. I would never leave an animal out there, but there are times it's like, you know, I just want a day to relax.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  Last winter, Mary was finally about to get a break. An entire two weeks of vacation. Over Christmas time, her whole family would be coming into town to celebrate. 20 people.

• 8:46Speaker 02

  On her last day of work, she went to a holiday party.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  My boss from the Houston Humane Society was here for that party and he was saying, you know, "Oh, we're gonna get a cold snap. We're gonna probably have a lot of calls where we need to help people with dogs. So it looks like I'm not gonna get any time off for the holiday." So I'm like, "Oh, poor you. Sorry. I'm gonna be off and having a good time. See ya at the beginning of the year."

• 9:13Speaker 02

  She got home and did not set her alarm for the first day of her vacation. She woke up slow, got bins of Christmas decorations down from the attic: lights, Santa figurines, a faux tree with shimmering glitter that's supposed to look like ice crystals.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  The person that wants to make the house beautiful before the holidays. Decorating and washing all of our china, you know, washing wine glasses, and I'm that person.

• 9:41Speaker 02

  With a full three days before Christmas, she took her time. After she put up a few lights, she put on her heaviest coat and went out to run errands: last-minute gifts for nieces and nephews. It was 22 degrees out.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  And then started thinking, "Oh, gosh, you know, it's really cold." So I headed up to the bridge just to go see if anything was going on up there. I didn't expect to see anything because I hadn't gotten any calls.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  The Wall Street Bridge, where hundreds of thousands of bats make their home each year. Mary knew this kind of cold weather would be a problem for these bats.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  And then I walk up and I see this guy staring at the ground. He's looking at a bat that looks dead. And then, as I looked down the walkway, there were lots of bats. They look like a piece of bark just laying on the ground. Christmas just went right out of my head and like, I gotta go get a bag and I just, it's just an automatic response.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  Mary went back to her car and dumped a box full of tools out into the trunk. She took the empty box.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  And just went around and scooped them up.

• 10:51Speaker 02

  Mary picked up bat after bat after bat.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  They're as hard as a rock. Like their wings don't droop or anything. Everything's just like drawn in. Their wings are close to their sides. Their little heads are kind of tucked down. Their feet are tucked up. Their eyes were all closed. They were trying to keep warm, so they were just kind of crunched up as much as they could be, like a big piece of mulch.

• 11:13Speaker 02

  In most cold climates, bats go south in the winter. But in Houston, they stay all year round. It's not supposed to get this cold here. When it does, though, the freezing temperatures can cause the bats to go into hypothermic shock.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  As their metabolism shuts down, they don't have the strength to hold on anymore, and they eventually just release. And they're hanging upside down, so they hit the ground with their heads most of the time.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  These bats had dropped 30 feet, headfirst, onto concrete.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  And, you know, my heart just broke. These bats had fallen, and people are just riding their bikes and, you know, walking by or whatever, and nobody thought to do anything. Like, why can't I be the person that just walks by? Yeah, I don't know how to do that. I don't even know. I don't... I would feel horrible.

• 12:11Speaker 03

  And do you ever feel that you're cursed with being extremely compelled to save animals?

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Yes. Like, why does... why does this have to happen right now? Like, I always feel like you have to try. I just can't not do it.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  Mary counted the bats as she scooped them into the box. There were 38 of them.

• 12:33Speaker 03

  And did anyone see you picking up the bats? Like, did anyone see you and say, like, "Hey, what are you doing?" Or give you a strange look?

• 12:42Speaker 01

  When you turn 50 as a woman, people do not notice what you're doing anymore. Nobody said a word to me. So I just snatched them up as fast as I could and got them to my car.

• 12:54Speaker 02

  She put the box full of bats in the passenger seat and turned on the seat warmer.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  I just literally piled them all on top of each other. I didn't know if they were alive or dead.

• 13:04Speaker 02

  With her shopping plans out the window, Mary began driving the 45 minutes from the bridge to her house with a box full of bats in her passenger seat.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  Just kept kind of looking over as I was driving home to see if they'd started moving around. And they did. At least some are alive. Oh, this is awesome. Some of them got a little bit more rambunctious as we drove. So I covered the box eventually because I didn't want them starting to climb out. So yay, they're alive. Okay, so now when I get home, I'm going to have to set up, just kind of in my head, planning like, what am I going to do?

• 13:37Speaker 02

  Forty-five minutes. Mary pulled up into her driveway and brought a box now full of squirming bats into the house. Her husband met her at the door.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  So I think he was just kind of amused to watch me figure it out.

• 13:52Speaker 02

  When you say amused, like, what does that look like? What he...

• 13:55Speaker 01

  Like, he just kind of gets this funny grin on his face. And, you know, like, oh, okay, well, here you go again. Like, have fun. You know?

• 14:05Speaker 02

  She immediately got to work and recorded a message for her followers.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  Hi, this is Mary from the Houston Humane Society. On the way back, the bats started coming too. So we believe they're all alive. We're going to start triaging them right now.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  First, she transformed the guest room into a rehab room. She covered the floors in plastic. She pulled incubators from the closet and covered the inside of the boxes with mesh and fleece, where the bats could hang and cuddle up with each other.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  To give you a quick look at the bats before we start. That's a lot of bats. You can see some of them moving. So we will give them, we will let them warm up in our incubator or in this...

• 14:48Speaker 02

  She put humidifiers around the room and warmed up worms and also cups and cups of fluid.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  And then started pulling out the bats one by one to do a little examination to see if they had fractures or, you know, who was dead, who was alive, all that kind of stuff. You know, they'd been through a lot, but they were moving around. And they were all alive. And nobody had fractures.

• 15:15Speaker 02

  To help hydrate them, Mary filled syringes up with warm fluid and placed the syringes on a heating pad to keep them warm. She took the bats one by one into her hand.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  And then bring my left pointer and thumb together and pinch a little bit of skin and inject the fluids under that.

• 15:36Speaker 02

  After she injected the fluid, she was ready to feed them. She pulled the heads off a bunch of worms she had warmed up.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  And then squeeze some of the goo out of the worm with my right hand and just kind of tap it against their little mouth. And usually if I can get a little bit of liquid to get through their gums or through their lips, then they'll kind of like, oh, that tastes good. Their tongues are like, they come to a point. And they lick their lips a lot and their noses are kind of going. And that first time when they start eating is such a relief.

• 16:09Speaker 02

  After the bats ate, Mary put them back into the incubator, one at a time.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  Because I spent quite a bit of time just kind of staring at them, seeing them kind of have little squabbles with each other. And somebody would get mad at the other one. And so, you know, one bat would leave this little group and move over to another group or whatever, and then kind of cause a ruckus over there. And then everybody would calm down or, you know, it just, there was always some kind of chatter going on in there. And it's like...

• 16:43Speaker 01

  They're very social, so they're communicating with each other. Everybody was doing lots of things.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  By the time she got the bats settled, the sun had set. She also noted that outside, the temperature had dropped.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  More were going to come. You know, until it warmed up, we were going to continue to get bats that dropped.

• 17:02Speaker 02

  Mary grabbed her headlamp and got back into her car. It was around 10:00 PM when she got back to the Wah Bridge.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  That bridge has two hike and bike paths. One's high, one's low. And then after the low one, there's a slanted thing that goes down into the bayou. And so there's three levels to check. And there were bats on every level.

• 17:23Speaker 02

  Cold, still bats.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  It's like, whoa, there's a lot more here than there were before.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  She had come prepared, this time with a bigger box. Mary scooped up the small, still bats from the ground and again piled them on top of each other in the box. It was nearly midnight when she got them all into the car.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  My brain was kind of going again, like, okay, I don't know how many bats are here, but there's a lot. Like, how am I going to divvy them up in the incubators? And how am I going to deal with this number of bats now? Just kind of, you know, your brain's going a million miles an hour. Kind of really super focused. Your heart's going a little bit and everything else kind of disappears.

• 18:07Speaker 02

  On the drive home, she kept checking in on the bats.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  Like, come on, like, anybody in there?

• 18:12Speaker 02

  When she got them into her house, she immediately went into triage mode, checking the bats for head injuries, broken bones.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  Every time I'd reach my hand in, I hope it's alive.

• 18:22Speaker 02

  She counted the number of bats that had survived the fall.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  That's when I got 99 bats. I didn't expect 99. I didn't expect 99.

• 18:34Speaker 02

  Mary fed and hydrated these 99 bats. She hadn't had a chance to check on that first batch of 30. She worried about how they'd fared over the past few hours in the incubator.

• 18:44Speaker 01

  I wanted to make sure that my attention didn't get away from them to the other bats, to their detriment.

• 18:52Speaker 02

  She counted over 130 bats in her guest room. By the time she got the new batch of bats warmed up and settled in, it was past 2:00 in the morning.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  I think when I got into bed, you know, that's when everything kind of catches up with you afterwards.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  That's when Mary realized she didn't have a plan.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  I still didn't know what I was going to do with them. Like, once we got them triaged, I hadn't gotten that far yet. So I was still freaking out. There's only so much I can do as one person. Once you've taken all these animals in, they're your responsibility.

• 19:30Glynn Washington?

  No plan, over 130 wild bats in our home. And Mary, Mary can't help but wonder, will the bats even make it through the night? Stay tuned.

• 19:51Glynn Washington?

  Did you ever look at your credit card bill and think, how did that happen? What am I gonna do? I need a plan? Well, I did. Let me tell you something. Having a plan is one thing, but using it, watching that number, that I owe the credit people number go to zero, that is something different. And Monarch helped me get there. The debt paid on simulator and visualizer uses your real balances and payments to project your debt free day. Try different payments. See what gets you there sooner. Watch that date move. And when you hit zero, that's when you get the budget for the celebration. Write your own money story with Monarch.

• 20:35Glynn Washington?

  Use code SNAP at monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com with code SNAP. Look, recently, I just had the treatment. I needed a sofa. Wanted to finally, finally have something nice. And I picked out a beautiful leather couch, gorgeous, from Article. And it recently arrived. And I cannot stop looking at it. It's stunning. And it's time because the age of throwaway, fast fashion nonsense is over. The time of craft and quality is now.

• 21:17Glynn Washington?

  And not only do you get all of this without a huge markup, it's not just a bunch of parts in a box that you can't put together either. Article offers fast, affordable shipping across the US and Canada with options for professional assembly if you prefer a hands off experience. And Article is offering our listeners $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. To claim, visit article.com/Snap and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout. That's article.com/Snap for $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more.

• 21:58Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment. When last we left, Mary had taken over 130 wild bats into her home. Would she actually be able to help? Snap Judgment.

• 22:10Speaker 02

  Mary closed her eyes, just hoping the bats would survive the night, hoping it would warm up in the morning and she could return the bats back to the bridge. But when she woke up and checked the weather, she saw it was even colder than the day before, less than 25 degrees out. She checked on the bats in her guest room. Every one of them had survived the night.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  Makes me feel good to see their little chipper shining eyes and kind of looking around, all kind of cuddled in separate corners.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  It was two days before Christmas, but instead of dealing with the bins of decorations stacked in the hallway, Mary put on her warmest socks, her warmest boots. She knew that her at-home rehab room had reached capacity, but she also knew that there would be even more bats in danger. So she drove back down to the Wall Street Bridge. And there, she found dozens of bats on the ground. Mary picked them up, put them into her car, and drove towards this other bridge about a half hour away in Pearland.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  This is a really small bridge, so I head down there and think I'm probably going to pick up 30 or 40 more bats.

• 23:26Speaker 02

  Mary parked her car near the bridge.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  I start walking down the little embankment and turn and look under the bridge, and it's just covered with bats. And I'm just like, oh no.

• 23:41Speaker 02

  And she recorded on her cellphone.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  More bats in Pearland.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  It was just covered under the bridge with bats. And there were some that had tried to move and there was that little creek. And so there were a lot of drowned bats in the water. It was just like horrible scene. I went back up to my car and just started dumping out these big, huge, plastic bins. I had three of them and started loading bats up in those three bins. 300 in each bin.

• 24:23Speaker 02

  At first, Mary collected 600 bats.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  And that's when I was like, oh, my God. How am I going to take care of all these bats? Oh, my gosh, you know, where am I going to put up? These aren't going to fit into incubators. What am I going to do with these bats? Like, there's no way I can keep all these animals alive. I can't, I can't triage all of them effectively. I can't give them all fluids. I can't force feed them. I can't, you know, there's just no way.

• 24:55Speaker 02

  But Mary being Mary put the three bins of bats into the backseat of her car without a plan.

• 25:01Speaker 01

  And then just headed home, cranked up the heater in the car and headed home. There were 900 bats that fell from that bridge.

• 25:10Speaker 02

  When she got home, Mary called up a colleague for help. They had 900 bats to check. Dead bats went into Mary's kitchen freezer. Live ones went back into the bins. It took hours.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  And so we're sitting on the floor and we started going through them. And then as they were warming up, some of them became fully alive and just took off.

• 25:36Speaker 02

  As soon as Mary put bats into a bin, others would wake up and fly off.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  The whole thing just felt so surreal and strange to be chasing these bats that looked like they were on death's doorstep two minutes ago, you know, around the house, flying around.

• 25:51Speaker 02

  One bat got away and somehow got into the kitchen.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  My two cats are sitting on the kitchen table, looking up. And the dog is sitting on the floor, looking up, and their heads are going around and around. So I'm like, oh, oh. I look up and there's a bat. And my first thought was, oh, my gosh, you know, if it lands and they... And they get it, number one, they'll injure it, or it could injure them.

• 26:14Speaker 02

  Mary immediately hopped up onto the countertop with her net.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  And the bats just going in circles the whole time.

• 26:20Speaker 02

  She couldn't catch it, and her animals freaked out.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  The dog and two of my cats were chasing a bat around the house. It's just flying around in circles, and they're all running around in circles. What's gonna happen? If I can't catch this bat, will it land? Will it just keep flying around forever?

• 26:40Speaker 02

  After nearly an hour-long bat chase, Mary finally got the bat into a bin.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  It was getting to be kind of a comedy of errors after a while. There was just nowhere to contain everything. So what do we do from here?

• 26:54Speaker 02

  Mary needed space. She looked at the bins of bats in one corner of the hallway, and then to the boxes of Christmas decorations in the other.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  I was just like, hey, can you just take all those bins and put them back in the attic? Because it's not getting done.

• 27:09Speaker 02

  She was a little concerned some of her family members might not want to come over for dinner.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Nobody in our family, other than us, are really animal people.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  She hadn't washed the china or finished cleaning, but still.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  We love to have the holidays here, and I wanted to have everybody here, regardless of whatever else was going on.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  She texted her family about the bats in her house and made sure to say it was safe, and she'd still be hosting dinner tomorrow. She put her phone down, but only for a moment, because that's when the calls started coming in. People had seen the videos she had posted.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  They're very chirpy.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  It seems settled in. We only lost one last night. That's the top. I'm getting calls from other people, you know, about other bats at Wall Bridge, because more bats are starting to fall. So then I start organizing, like, people who can go pick up the bats for me and bring them to my house.

• 28:16Speaker 02

  Someone came by with 30 bats, another dropped off 50. By the end of the day, Mary had around 1,200 bats in her house. She took heat lamps up to the attic and created this little bat cave up there.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  So I just kind of did an assembly line thing and started giving them fluids that way. And then I had the other bats still that I had to care for.

• 28:41Speaker 02

  Mary was up late into the night. When she finally got into bed, her heart was pounding.

• 28:47Speaker 01

  What could happen tomorrow? If I get more, really, what am I gonna do?

• 28:51Speaker 02

  When Mary woke up, it was Christmas Eve. The last two days had been a blur, and she hadn't gotten any of the things on her Christmas prep list done. She handed the list to her husband, who would be in charge of cooking this year.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  I was just kind of circulating between the bats upstairs, the bats down here, and kind of checking in with him, and just kind of doing little bits of things that I could throughout the day. My rehab room was just piled up with little boxes. People had been bringing bats in, and a trash can full of used syringes. It was just, I wasn't clearing anything out. It was just piling up. It was a mess. And bats have a very distinctive smell. And so that whole part of my house just smelled like real, strong, musky bat, which was driving me insane. I was kind of joking, like, whoa, everybody's gonna love coming over here for Christmas Eve because it smells like bat shit.

• 29:52Speaker 02

  But before Mary could come up with a plan to cover up the smell, more people showed up at her house with more boxes of bats. By now, people from all over Houston were watching those videos she'd been posting of bats in her house and under the bridges.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  There was just so much going on. I mean, there were so many phone calls.

• 30:12Speaker 02

  She went out to buy two dog crates from the pet store, big enough for German shepherds. She put them in her attic.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  I just grab handfuls of bats, you know, gently place them in there. So, in total so far, we just got 80 new bats in this morning. So in total so far, we have 1,544 bats in care. I think they're incredible. They're all doing well, as you can see.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  And as soon as they would hear the bats that I was bringing in start to chatter or anything, the bat from that colony, not the other colony, but that colony would start getting super excited and like chattery and running around the cage. It was like they knew those bats, like, hey, that's Bob. You know, I hear Bob. Bob's coming or whatever, you know. And that was amazing to me, those interactions with each other and how excited they would get to see each other when I would put the new one in the enclosure and they would all come and check them out, you know. Any of them could have taken a turn for the worse. I didn't know. I was afraid. My main fear, I think, at that point was I was afraid

• 31:23Speaker 01

  the freeze was going to go on a very long time. You know, we could lose them all if the freeze went on too long.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  When the sun went down on Christmas Eve, it was 25 degrees outside.

• 31:38Speaker 01

  So it was still a concern. It was a concern that we would continue to get more and more.

• 31:43Speaker 02

  Mary woke up early on Christmas Day. The bats were in the attic. Her husband was downstairs cooking ham. And then her doorbell rang. This time, it was her son, his kids, her mother-in-law. Soon, in addition to the 1,600 bats stowed away in the attic, there were around 20 people in her house.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  Everybody commented on the smell. So I just got the bats out of the way at first. Like, as people came in, I said, do you want to go see the bats? Real quick before, you know, we move on. And so those who did, I walked them up. We have a walk-in attic. So I walked them up to the attic quietly, let them look into both of the containers to see what it was like. And then we left.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  And Mary went with her family to the dining room table. It was the first time in days she'd put on real clothes and sat down for a proper meal.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  I knew I had done everything I could for the bats at that point.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  And it did feel good to me, knowing that they were up there and they were settled and quiet and had everything they needed. And then I was allowed to be settled and quiet and spend time with my family and focus on that. I could let that, I could let the bats go for that little period of time.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  She thought about the bats upstairs, how they got so excited every time another bat would come into an incubator.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  I guess it crosses species lines, doesn't it? I mean, nobody wants to be alone, you know? Our connection here downstairs as humans and their connection upstairs, I just, I think that gives life a large meaning. We all need connection.

• 33:37Speaker 02

  Mary told her family she appreciated them.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  And how much, you know, it really meant to me that everybody was just kind of rolling with what we were doing.

• 33:48Speaker 02

  A few more bats came in that night.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  I was keeping a tally. I think it was like 1,645, something like that.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  I understand it's weird to most people that what I do is unusual or maybe strange or something like that. But I ended up with 1,600 bats in my attic over the holiday.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  I'm here to give you an update on our bats, but first I want to give you a couple other pieces of information as well. We are going to try to release the bats Wednesday evening. So if you are interested in seeing the release down at the Wall Street Bridge, click on the link.

• 34:25Speaker 02

  After six long days since Mary brought those first 30 bats home, the weather finally started warming up. The temperature had climbed to around 45 degrees.

• 34:37Speaker 02

  Mary sent out an invitation on social media to a bat release event, where all those people who had been following along through her videos could come out and see the bats for real.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  And I didn't know if all the bats were gonna fly out, or if none of them were gonna fly out. It didn't really matter.

• 34:56Speaker 02

  Mary got to the bridge early, just before dusk, with bins of over 1,600 bats. There were dozens of people there, waiting for the bats to fly from their cozy incubators back into the world. Mary taped off the entire underbelly of the bridge. It smelled like bat guano.

• 35:17Speaker 01

  And then there's the chirping of the bats over my head, and then there's the chirping of the bats in the container as well, in the enclosure. And so they're getting more and more active and excited, and the bats above me are getting more and more excited. And I'm talking to people and explaining what we're doing. The bats in the enclosure are starting to like, go around in circles and get all excited because they hear their bat. They're like, "Shut up, lady. Let's go."

• 35:46Speaker 02

  Finally, Mary unzipped the enclosure of the dog crate.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  So when the bats are trying to climb out, they'd have to go around a lip. And they really couldn't figure that out. So I was reaching in with my hands with gloves and then just holding them up. And then they would go out. And it was just so exciting, you know?

• 36:09Speaker 02

  As each bat flew towards the bridge, she talked to them.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  "Ooh, I'll give you a five. You know, you struggled a little bit, but you pulled it off," or whatever. "Or you're a 10. You just, you know, took off right away and you looked strong," or whatever. Just kind of chit-chatting with them as they were taking off.

• 36:28Speaker 01

  And then I had a couple that didn't succeed there as well.

• 36:31Speaker 02

  Those bats that didn't make it, she put them in a different container to take them home.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  And put them in a different container and then kept releasing. To see these bats taking off and going up under the bridge. They would just glide out, kind of go over the bayou and up into the crevices of the bridge itself. It's just so heartwarming. I was so happy for that bat bat to be able to go back home.

• 37:08Glynn Washington?

  Huge, gigantic thanks to Mary Warwick for sharing her story. And thanks as well to the Houston Humane Society, the TWRC Wildlife Center, and the Bat World Sanctuary in Texas, whose staff protect and rehabilitate bats and provide education and training on the proper treatment of bats to people all over the United States. The original score for that piece was by Dirk Schwartzoff. It was produced by Shaina Shealy.

• 37:40Glynn Washington?

  Now, after the break, more chirps and echolocation, a bat story from one of our very own Snap producers. Stay tuned.

• 37:57Glynn Washington?

  You know, when you want a snack, something salty and sweet, but you're not supposed to be eating snacks. You're supposed to be eating celery and carrots and other things that taste like cardboard. Well, Kachava's got the nutrition your body craves in one deliciously simple shake. Let me tell you what I love. Kachava's new salted caramel flavor. You've got your sweet. You've got your salty. You've got your nutrition all at the same time. And if you want variety, they've got chocolate, vanilla, chai, matcha, strawberry, coffee, cinnamon French toast. What? Cinnamon French toast? Give in and embrace your salty side. Go to kachava.com

• 38:42Glynn Washington?

  and use code JUDGMENT for 15% off your first order. That's kachava, K-A-C-H-A-V-A, dot com, code JUDGMENT.

• 38:55Glynn Washington?

  Okay, okay, it's almost, almost gift giving time. And because gift giving time is cold outside time, it's wanna stay by a fire time. I like giving something cozy. And nobody, but nobody does cozy like Quince. What's better than one for them, one for me, or you? Like my Quince Organic Gods Dream Quilt Set paired with the Brush Cotton Sheet Set that I got for me, that I got for them, for me? Put it together, you've got cozy squared. Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com.

• 39:38Glynn Washington?

  Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Snap Judgment. It's the best way to support the show.

• 39:55Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment. My name is Sam Washington and I heard tale of this story. That Snap Judgment's own John Facile has a special affinity for bats. Something you don't hear very often. And finally, finally I sat down and asked him about it. I don't know what this story is. I don't know. I know that it involves an animal of some sort.

• 40:21Speaker 04

  Well, so you know, we're doing this episode about bats and I have a story about an encounter with a bat that changed my life. I certainly wouldn't have become a journalist. I wouldn't be sitting here with you.

• 40:38Glynn Washington?

  No exaggeration.

• 40:39Speaker 04

  No exaggeration.

• 40:40Glynn Washington?

  This story with a bat changed the course of your life.

• 40:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. So, um, right after college, I was working like a series of odd jobs, as you do. And the last one in a string of jobs I had was I was working as a street canvasser for this charity that like helps provide food and clothes for poor kids.

• 41:03Glynn Washington?

  So you're the guy who's like, can I talk to you for a minute?

• 41:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, I was that guy. Well, very briefly, so I'll explain. I got this job, there was a week of training involved, and then they put you out on the street. And my very first day on the street, I was in downtown Chicago, you know, right near the Picasso sculpture. I pretty quickly, within like an hour, realized I was just terrible at this job. Like, I felt so uncomfortable approaching people and nobody wanted to talk to me. You know, they could sense it. People were just blowing by me like, "Hi, do you have any time for?" Like, "Nope, sorry, gotta go. I gotta perform open-heart surgery in 15 minutes." You know, like, just making stuff up.

• 41:45Glynn Washington?

  Wow, wow.

• 41:46Speaker 04

  And-

• 41:46Glynn Washington?

  Seems like a hard job.

• 41:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, and it's also a weird job because like, the thing was that you, you get commission on the donations. So it kind of felt like, I don't know, like I was trying to move these poor kids, like there were cars or something. I start going into this existential crisis. Like, why am I here? What am I doing? Am I just supposed to live this life going from job to job, barely making enough money to cover rent and ramen? And I'm thinking all this stuff, and then I look down at my feet, and on the pavement right there, there's this little brown ball.

• 42:26Speaker 04

  And at first I thought it was like trash, like a, like a dirty cotton ball or something. But then, ever so gently with my foot, I kind of turned it over, and this bat just spreads its wings out wide. And-

• 42:42Glynn Washington?

  Wow.

• 42:42Speaker 04

  Opens its mouth, like it's yawning.

• 42:46Speaker 04

  And in that moment, it's like, all the wonder in the world just filled my heart. And I forgot all my problems. And I'm like, you know, there is magic out there. And I'm missing it every second I spend doing something that I hate.

• 43:06Speaker 04

  But I don't really have time to dwell on that because clearly this bat needs help. It's stunned. Maybe it flew into a building. So I ran into a nearby Walgreens and I go up to the middle-aged manager and I'm like, "I need a box. I need a cardboard box." And the guy's like, "What? Like, this is Walgreens. We don't just hand out cardboard boxes." And I said, "But you don't understand. There's a bat outside and I need to help it." And he's like, "Oh." Like, he flips a switch. He's like, "Hold on, hold on." He runs into the back, grabs me a cardboard box. "Thank you." I run outside, carefully scoop up the bat, close the box. And so my plan is to take this bat to a park and release it. But first, I'm like, "I don't ever want to come back to this job again.

• 43:51Speaker 04

  I gotta quit this damn job." So I was gonna have to quit to two people. It would be awkward, you know, because like, they've paid me for a week of training. I'm very conflict averse. This is not gonna go well. The first person I had to quit to was my shift supervisor. And she was posted up at some food court. So I found her at a table and as I'm approaching her, I start getting nervous. Like, "Oh, man. Like, what am I gonna do? What if she's really mad?" And then I get this idea that like, maybe this sense of wonder that I had, seeing the bat, maybe I could use that to my advantage here.

• 44:34Speaker 04

  So I go up to the shift supervisor and I'm like, "Hey, you wanna see something cool? I found a bat on the street." I open the box and show it to her and she's like, "Oh, my gosh. Wow." And I go, "Yeah." And then I close the box and tell her, "Also, I'm quitting." She's like, "What?" But I split.

• 44:57Speaker 04

  I go a couple of blocks over to the canvassing operations center, where the guy who hired me is sitting at a desk. Go up to him, open the box. "Hey, I found a bat." "Oh, my god, cool, wow." Close the box. Also, I'm quitting. So, I get on the train home, and I'm just glowing with this experience. But that wears off pretty quick when I get back to the apartment and the bat wakes up. And it is not happy. It is like, "Where am I? This cave is too small." It starts scratching and clawing and making these demonic noises, like "Wsh, wsh, wsh, wsh, wsh." Like, trying to get out. And I'm like, "Oh, god, what have I done?

• 45:42Speaker 04

  I have a winged rat in a flimsy cardboard box. Like, what if it has rabies? What if it bites me? I don't have good health insurance. What am I gonna do?" So, really quickly, I sprint with the box over to the park a few blocks away, which was Humboldt Park. And I pull open one of the flaps and just fling the box out into the air to get it as far away from me as possible. And while it's in midair, the bat flies out and just takes off across Humboldt Park Lagoon and into the night. So, the next week, since I've got all this free time now, since I quit my job,

• 46:26Speaker 04

  I end up going to this documentary screening, where I met the guy who would give me my first job working on documentaries, which was my first job anything journalism-related. I hadn't planned on this career. And that set me on the path to, like, some dozen years later, being here with you.

• 46:47Glynn Washington?

  Wow. Be real with me.

• 46:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:53Glynn Washington?

  If there was no bat, would you be here right now?

• 46:59Speaker 04

  I don't know, because I don't think I would have quit that job that day. I really needed the money. It was a bad idea to quit. I probably had like 40 bucks in my bank account. So, I don't know what would have happened, to be honest.

• 47:15Glynn Washington?

  Well, you heard it from John Facile.

• 47:18Speaker 04

  God bless the bat.

• 47:30Glynn Washington?

  Big thanks to our own John Facile. Original score for that story was by Dirk Swartzoff.

• 47:39Glynn Washington?

  Now, do you know what's better than hearing a story? Giving one. And you can give the gift of story this very Batwoman Snap episode. You can send to family and friends through the Snap Judgment Podcast. It will be forever grateful and gaze at you with a look of fierce appreciation and deep pride every single time you walk into a room just imagined. SnapJudgment.org. And did I mention Snap's evil twin podcast, Spooked, is available everywhere. Snap is brought to you by the team that knows bats are our friends, especially the uber producer, Mr. Mark Ristich, who hangs upside down to sleep every single night.

• 48:24Glynn Washington?

  To the right of me, communicating in super high echolocation is Nancy Lopez. There's Pat Vasili Miller, Anna Sussman, Renzo Goria, John the Bat Boy Facile, Shayna Shealy, Taylor Decot, Flo Wiley, Marissa Dodge, Bo Walsh, David Exame, and Regina Beniaco. On Team Snap, the union represented producers, artists, editors, and engineers, and members of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO, Local 51. And this, this is not the news. No way this is news.

• 49:04Glynn Washington?

  In fact, you could discover that bats are more closely related to primates than they are to rodents. And even while you're digesting this extraordinary fact, you would still not be as far away from the news as this is. But this is PRX.