I was taught at an early age that vacation trips should always be to see things that you couldn’t experience at home. Fair and good, but wholly inadequate in some circumstances. In this case, trying to get decent photos of Moody Gardens’s resident vampire bats, I learned a lot more than just the problems of photographing darkness-loving animals in low-light conditions. This little guy spent his entire time under the tinted lights in his enclosure giving me the most horrible look of disdain and contempt, occasionally popping up to snort at me before returning to grooming himself
And then there were these two, alternating between nuzzling each other and excitedly chittering at each other in what I would have sworn was laughter. A five-hour drive to Galveston, and I could have had the same experience at home.