But not the kind of bats for baseball. Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan is moving his minor league team to a nearby suburb. In fact, the bat phenomenon neatly sums up Austin cool. About a dozen years ago, the main downtown bridge became the summer home for a colony of 1 million or so Mexican free-tailed bats. The bats' dusk flights draw droves of people to the bridge and nearby riverbanks.
Restaurants take reservations for bat observation decks.
The city's hockey team is called the Icebats. They really are kind of an unofficial mascot for the city. Everything in Texas is big - including the Capitol Recently restored, the pink granite home of Texas government covers 2.25 acres of ground with 8.5 acres of floor space. As with so much else in Texas, the building is quite a story. After sale of public land to fund a new capitol was approved in 1876, the builders accepted 3 million acres in 10 counties of the Texas Panhandle.