For Christmas this year I asked a dear friend and local artist Michelle Yates to draw "The Bat Tower" for me. It was a Christmas present for my oldest son, Jack.
Both my two oldest children, Jack and Mary, were born in the Florida Keys in the 80s. It was a wild time and they are true blood Conchs. When the kids were two and three we lived on Sugarloaf Key, a tiny island ten miles north of Key West.
When we were bored we would take meandering walks around a weird old structure called The Bat Tower. It was down a dirt road in the middle of the mangroves. And we were always the only folks there.
The Bat Tower was built in the 1920s. Henry Flagler, a wealthy entrepreneur, had dreamed up and constructed a wonderful resort, much like The Arlington, in Key West called Casa Marina. He also built The Overseas Highway, the 90 mile train track leading to Key West.
Almost everything in the Keys was wonderful at the time, except for the nightmarish mosquitos. No caves meant no bats, so the monstrous mosquito population had the run of the place.
Somebody said, "We need bats!" Henry Flagler and everyone else agreed.
So, the story goes...
Somehow, the people of the Keys managed to get hundreds or thousands of bats from Austin, Texas into railroad cars. The train hauled them across the country and down to Sugarloaf Key, where they had brilliantly built the Bat Tower, the perfect home for a bunch of out of state bats.
The transplanted bats did in fact take to the Bat Tower, filled it up as soon as the train arrived in Sugarloaf. And as sunset approached, folks from near and far gathered around the Bat Tower to watch the bats emerge and eat up all the mosquitos.
The sun set, nightfall consumed the Florida Keys and the bats, emerged from The Bat Tower, in mass, and immediately, the story goes, flew in a great ebony cloud, Westward, back to their caves in Austin, Texas.
If there are factual errors in this tale, I don't want to hear about them. The kids and I had many lovely, sweaty afternoons wandering around the Bat Tower, delighted by the tenacity and loyalty of those bats.
It is the best story and I have had a blast sharing it
With others! Keep these coming in 2025!