On a recent day in November, under a mesh tent in their Austin backyard, Dianne Odegard and Lee Mackenzie took turns hand-feeding the dozens of bats in their care. Partners both in life and in the Austin Bat Refuge, a nonprofit they run from their home in the Cherrywood neighborhood, the septuagenarian couple has rescued thousands of injured bats over the past two decades. Their garden is full of night-blooming greenery: fragrant jasmine, Mexican honeysuckle, and burnt red shrimp plants, all in service of their nocturnal charges, who take practice flights under the tent come nightfall. Mackenzie, his shoulder-length gray hair tied into a ponytail, wore a black latex glove as he fed live worms to Sylvie, a hoary bat (so named for its white-tipped fur, resembling…
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