Throughout the nation, and with Christmas finally arriving, much of America was facing severe and unrelenting weather.
Perhaps one of the most extreme examples came to us from Buffalo, New York, where a devastating blizzard claimed the lives of scores of people – some of whom passed away while awaiting emergency services that were stranded by the storm.
But the weirdest weather phenomenon this week occurred in Houston, Texas, where it was briefly raining bats.
Freezing temperatures in Texas are having a devastating impact on the city’s wildlife, including its largest bat colony.
The Mexican free-tailed bats, live in the crevices of Houston’s Waugh Bridge, but the cold temperatures have caused them to go into hypothermic shock, causing them to fall onto the pavement below.
The bats had their own guardian angel, however.
To save them, Mary Warwick, the Wildlife Director of the Houston Humane Society, has been going down to the bridge with a flashlight and collection box to rescue the cold-stunned bats.
She then brings them back to be rehabilitated and placed them next to a heat source to raise their body temperature.
‘After that, we give them fluids under their skin to hydrate them,’ she explained to ABC 13. ‘Then, several hours after that, we can start offering them food.’
Warwick will have her work cut out for her in the coming days.
Warwick, city’s only bat rehabilitator plans to go keep going back to bridge until the freeze ends.
Warwick has now placed foam on the ground for the bats to have a soft landing and took almost 200 home on Friday to care for them.
The story is reminiscent of a similar situation in Florida, where every few years citizens will be warned of the possibility that tree-dwelling iguanas may find themselves cold-stunned and fall clumsily from their perches as well.
