Mascara is made out of . . .

... Bat Poop.  For the past 3 years, our friends' kids (Anna & Stefan) have been telling us, actually singing it to us in a little ditty,  that mascara is made of bat guano. For the past three years, I haven't cared enough to find out if it were true or not.  I've just sat idly by watching our kids pass on the possibly false information. 

Well, as completely gross and probably uninteresting as the topic is, I finally got some answers.  While my nephew was here, we met some friends out at Waugh bridge near downtown Houston at sunset to watch 300,000 thousand Mexican free-tail bats emerge from their colony and fly off for their nightly tour of Houston as they help the city with their insect problems.  Apparently they like to eat moths, and hopefully mosquitos. Then they'll return before sunrise, sleep all day, and do it all again at sunset. 

It was a pretty amazing sight.  A smelly one because 300,000 bats make lots of guano, but still, to watch that many bats continuously fly from underneath a bridge, around a tree and around a high rise, was a sight to behold.  And it lasted forever.  I expected a minute or two of anxiety as bats flew over my head, but instead I got 15 minutes of a steady stream of black wings moving so quickly all of my pictures were blurs.  

My favorite moment of the night though was when we got in our van to go home, with a few extra kids we took with us.  We drove up next to a man and woman in an open-top convertible and Stefan, the boy who originally told us the fun fact about mascara, yelled out, "better watch out or you'll get hit with some guano." For some reason, dirty boy jokes really tickled me, especially when I felt he was right.  Didn't the driver see the black mass he was openly driving under?

Since we made the trip, I have been curious about mascara fun fact so I finally googled it.  For those who were about to throw out your mascara I do have some answers for you.  Mascara is made from guanine, which looks similar to guano and comes from the same root word, but luckily, it's not excrement from a bat, instead guanine is made from fish scales (which is also kind of gross).  So ladies, there you have it - your mascara comes from our underwater pals and not our furry nocturnal friends. 

Thank you Snopes for helping me out.  

And thank you for reading through this sordid topic, and if you come and visit us in Houston, we'd gladly take you on this free and fun-fact finding trip.