I only ever knew Austin as a pro-bat city, so finding out that it took some doing to get it this way was a surprise to me. I'm grateful for this piece of my city's history, and to the people who worked on behalf of the bats.It's a little sad to listen to this after the deep freeze last month killed off so many of Austin's bats. As an interesting coda to the story: so many people were upset when the bats fell from the bridge onto the walking paths below, and it became a big local story (the city estimates that 30-35k bats were killed by the cold).