A Texas wildlife rehabilitator nursed over 1,600 frozen bats back to health in her attic after many of them fell from their roosts during Houston’s plunging temperatures last week.
Mary Warwick, the wildlife director at the Houston Humane Society, told CNN that she has been working with bats since 2019, when another cold snap sent Houston’s bats falling from their roosts. But she had never staged a rescue operation quite this large before. On December 21, temperatures in Houston dropped from the 60s during the day to 22 degrees at night. “That’s a steep drop in temperature for the bats,” Warwick explained.
“We decided once I got them stabilized I could put them in my attic where it’s cool but it’s not freezing, and that would reduce their metabolism so they wouldn’t need to eat, but they would drink water,” she explained. So Warwick divided the bats, using crates to keep each colony together, and left them in her attic to rest and regain their strength.