Not One Bat Scanned the Code

The link finished loading just as the first bat dropped out from under the bridge. It's like getting a text that explains fireworks while one goes off over your head.

I was on the south bank of Lady Bird Lake, cross-legged on grass so dry it felt like a doormat, holding my phone up to a new sign the way you hold a phone up to a restaurant menu you're too vain to wear readers for. A breeze off the water brought that ammonia smell up from under the deck. Old-timers will tell you that smell means it's almost time. The new stuff will tell you the same thing, with production values.

What happened, plainly

As of today, August 26, the south bat-viewing area at the Congress Avenue Bridge has a new Bat City experience: new signage, QR codes that pull up content, and short films. According to the reporting, the point is to bring visitors closer to the story behind the colony.

To be fair, nobody charged me anything. Nobody put a wristband on me. Nobody asked me to choose a tier. I'm saying this up front because I'm a grouch, not a liar, and because in a few paragraphs I'm going to complain anyway.

The word is the problem

It's "experience." In this town that word has a track record. It shows up in front of a cover charge the way a grackle shows up in front of a dropped tortilla chip. A coffee shop becomes a coffee experience, and the drip goes up two dollars. A taco becomes a taco experience, and now it comes on a slate tile with a QR code for the backstory of the salsa. I've learned to hear "experience" the way a cow hears the gate rattle.

So when the bats got one, I flinched. That's on me, not on the signs. The bats were the last thing in central Austin I was sure had no backstory to sell.

What we had

Picture a summer in the nineties. You'd park wherever you could, as long as you got there early and didn't ask questions, and walk down to the bank with a six-pack sweating in a paper sack. Nobody knew exactly when they'd come out. People argued about it like it was a football spread. Somebody's uncle swore it was 8:14. Somebody's girlfriend swore the uncle was drunk. Both of them were right about once a week.

A kid would shout "THERE!" at a grackle. Then a kid would shout "THERE!" at a mockingbird. Then a guy who was clearly not from here would quietly say "oh" and point, and that's how you knew. A dark ribbon peeled out from under the bridge and kept going and going and going, out over the water toward the east, past anything you could see, like the bridge had sprung a leak in the sky.

There was no narration. There was a mosquito on your ankle and the sound of a million and a half small wings, which is mostly the sound of everyone around you going quiet at once.

That was the whole program. It ran every warm night. It was free and didn't know it was free.

What the bats are

I want to be clear about the colony, because I love them and I don't want them caught in the crossfire. These are Mexican free-tailed bats. They moved in after the bridge was rebuilt in 1980, when the new deck happened to have the right cracks. The city's first reaction was mostly panic. Eventually the town came around, and the bats became the rare Austin landmark that showed up on its own and stayed because it liked the place.

Their business model is mosquitoes. They have never sought naming rights. They have no merch, no founder, and no Series A. Every evening they do the one thing they're for, with no apparent interest in whether anyone's watching. Honestly, that's the most Austin thing left in Austin.

So if anything in this town deserves to have its story told well, it's them. I'll grant that. I just don't love the feeling that the story now has a little doorway in front of it.

My own signage, unsanctioned

On the walk over I started drafting the plaques I'd have put up, if anyone had asked me, which nobody did and nobody will.

THIS IS THE SKY. It predates the condos behind you and has not raised its rates.

ON THIS SPOT, in a summer nobody can agree on, a man said "here they come" eleven times before they came. He is not a historical figure. He is all of us.

THE SMELL is not a malfunction. Do not report it.

WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO SEE has no app, takes no reservations, and will not remember you. Please extend it the same courtesy.

IF YOU CAN READ THIS, look up.

That last one is the whole plaque, if I'm being honest. The other four are the director's cut.

The scene tonight

The crowd tonight was the usual mix of tourists, families, a couple on what was clearly a third date, and a man explaining echolocation to a woman who had a laminated badge that suggested she understood echolocation fine. A few people stood at the new signs. A few held phones up to them. Most did what people have always done on that bank. They squinted at the underside of the bridge and tried to look like they weren't waiting.

I'm told there are short films. I watched part of one on my phone, which is a strange thing to do while sitting forty yards from the actual subject. I'm sure they're nicely made. The bats were not in a position to comment. They were busy being the film.

Then the ribbon started and everybody looked up, including the people at the signs, including me. That part hasn't changed. You can't put anything in front of a million and a half bats leaving a bridge. The sky won't let you.

I don't think the signs will ruin it. I think the bats will be fine. They outlasted the people who wanted them gone, and they'll outlast whatever the next round of content looks like. My grievance is smaller and more selfish. I liked that this was the one thing in town you didn't have to understand first. You just showed up, got bitten by a mosquito, and got your mind blown for nothing.

I scanned the second code on my way out, toward the parking garage. It finished loading right as the last of the colony cleared the far end of the lake. The content showed up right after the real thing left, which is Austin all over.