Thursday, August 17, 2017

Don't Blame the Bats

Tourists (and locals) line the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin to watch the thousands of Mexican Free-tailed Bats at sunset.
Although not as famous, Houston's Waugh Drive Bridge over Buffalo Bayou is home to an estimated quarter of a million bats, and is becoming an evening destination for sightseers as well.
It would be tempting to say that all of those bats, and their associated bat guano, might explain why the politics of Austinites in particular and that of more Houstonians  every day seem to fall far to the left of  Texans in general.  
Unfortunately, Histoplasma capsulatum, the fungal disease carried in bat guano, causes Histoplasmosis, a lung disease.  While there is one version of Histoplasmosis that can cause blindness, there is no proof it has ever caused anyone to go bat-shit crazy.

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