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Daily Newspaper and Travel Guide
for Pecos Country of West Texas
Lifestyle
Tuesday, July 31, 2001
Cross is guest at Rotary Club
The Pecos Rotary Club had Janet Cross, Program Coordinator for the Greater
West Texas Chapter of the Alzheimer's Association, as a guest speaker at
their meeting, recently.
Alzheimer's disease is a progressive, degenerative disease of the brain
and the most common form of dementia. Four million people in the United States
have Alzheimer's disease. Nineteen million say they have a family member
with the disease.
Information and help is available for families and friends of Alzheimer's
patients. The Pecos Daytime Group meets on the second Thursday of each month,
at 10 a.m., in the Reeves County Hospital Classroom.
The Pecos Evening Support Group will now meet at 4 p.m., on the fourth
Thursday of each month at the Pecos Senior Center.
Bat flight breakfast set for August
The 44th Annual Bat Flight Breakfast at Carlsbad Caverns National
Park will be held on Thursday, Aug. 9, from 5 a.m. until 7 a.m.
A few park employees, wanting to encourage visitors to witness the spectacular
morning return flight of the Mexican free-tailed bats, started the Bat Flight
Breakfast in the lat 1950s. Since then, the breakfast has become a tradition
and is held each year on the second Thursday of August. Having grown in popularity
over the years, the event now attracts 300 to 500 spectators.
The event provides an opportunity to experience the return of bats to
the Carlsbad Cavern where they sleep during the day after a night of foraging
for insects _ the bat colony at Carlsbad Cavern, estimated at 300,000 bats,
is capable of eating literally tons of insects a night. Before entering the
cavern in the morning, the bats circle several hundred feet overhead and
then dive in clusters into the cavern entrance. Unlike the shorter exit flight
of the previous night when the bats spiral up and leave the cave en masse,
the unusual sights and sounds of the smaller groups of returning bats normally
span several hours.
A reasonably priced outdoor breakfast - $6 for adults and $3 for children
age 12 and uner _ will be served by National Park Service employee volunteers
near the bat flight amphitheater and the cavern entrance. Park rangers will
not only be serving up eggs and sausage, they will provide interpretive information
about the bats and their return to the cavern. For the first 75 visitors
interested in participating, there will be a special guided tour down the
natural entrance. Entrance to the cavern will be free to all Bat Flight Breakfast
participants.
The annual breakfast is sponsored by the Carlsbad Caverns Activity Association
and Cavern Supply Company in cooperation with the National Park Service and
the Carlsbad Caverns Guadalupe Mountains Association.
For more information, call 505-785-2232, or visit the park's website at
www.nps.gov.cave.
Pecos Enterprise
York M. "Smokey" Briggs, Publisher
Division of Buckner News Alliance, Inc.
324 S. Cedar St., Pecos, TX 79772
Phone 915-445-5475, FAX 915-445-4321
e-mail news@pecos.net
Associated Press text, photo, graphic, audio and/or video material shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium.
Copyright 2000 by Pecos Enterprise
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