Batman!

摘要

Some 20 miles from downtown San Antonio, up a powder-dust road and across a series of barbed-wire fences crisscrossing Texas hill-country scrub, is the world's largest concentration of warm-blooded animals: a colony of some 20 million Mexican free-tail bats. They live in the 600-foot-long, 130-foot-deep Bracken Cave. Merlin Tuttle and I are sitting amid wild persimmons and cactus a short distance from the cave's entrance, a funnel-like sinkhole. In a starched white shirt, gold-rimmed glasses, and pressed pants, Tuttle seems out of place among the limestone boulders and prickly plants.