Día de los Muertos marks the partial closure of Pinnacles caves—for the bats.

Batman. It's one of those Halloween costumes that defies the ages. My brother was Batman as a kid in the early 80s. My friends' ridiculously cute baby was Batman this Halloween.

Batman's inspiration, the humble bat itself, could be an even scarier getup—especially amid Ebola hysteria. The lethal virus is thought to have been transmitted to humans from fruit bats in Guinea. Freaking terrifying.

But bats are also important pollinators, which makes them critical to the web of life in ways we might not appreciate.

Monterey County's own Pinnacles National Park is host to 13 of California's 23 bat species. Most elusive, and protected, is the tiny Townsend big-eared bat.

Exactly two years ago, on Día de los Muertos 2012, the Weekly ran a piece about how Pinnacles partially closes its talus caves every Nov. 1 through late-February to protect the bats. From that story:

Here it’s the humans, not the bats, who do the spooking. On the Day of the Dead, Pinnacles managers partially close Bear Gulch to let their Very Important Bats rest in peace. 


Pinnacles managers put a lot into protecting Townsends, listed in California as a sensitive species. Scientists didn’t know they inhabited Bear Gulch Cave until a grad student pointed it out in the late 1990s, but it’s now thought to host the biggest maternity colony between San Francisco and Mexico.


Pinnacles Wildlife Biologist Paul Johnson told me it's a delicate dance between public access and bat protection. The wrong management approach could make the bunny-eared Townsend bats disappear completely. 

And that, my friends, is scary.

(Here's a Pinnacles video of the Townsend bats in action. You can check cave status here.)