There should have been 16,000 bats flying that night in mid-July. Instead, only about 500 remained at the cave in Central Texas next to the Colorado River. The rest succumbed to white-nose syndrome, a fungal disease that has ravaged bat populations across the country.
Gorman Cave, in Colorado Bend State Park, is one of the caves that Nate Fuller monitors. Fuller, the state bat biologist with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, said by the spring of 2020 — as COVID-19 became a global pandemic — bats in caves and across Central Texas were facing a pandemic of their own.
