Correction. It is not the "Bracken" Bat Cave spider. It is the "Braken" Bat Cave spider. It is a common and understandable mistake. Here is the full story, written for the first time, on the odd cave name. The media could care less, but I suspect that many cavers will find it interesting, if not amusing, and especially if they were caving in Texas 30+ years ago.
In January 1977 Greg Passmore published "Spelean Studies Project Report No. 1", a collection of maps subtitled "Bexar County Cave Maps, A Second Look." Greg caught a lot of flak for this publication, some justified and some not. One complaint was that it included maps of a couple of caves not in Bexar County. Greg obviously knew that Bracken Bat Cave was not in Bexar County, but he included it as a nearby cave and one of interest to cavers in Bexar County; the point of his publication was to provide maps to young cavers in San Antonio looking for cave information. Another complaint was that there was a perfectly good map of Bracken Bat Cave, but Greg chose to use a sketch map by the late Randy M. Waters. Greg replied to this complaint by saying he used what maps he had and he wasn't able receive a copy of the actual survey-based map. There was also ridicule that Bracken was misspelled "Braken" by Randy. Here is the truth behind the sketch map. Randy had rendered his own sketch of the cave, but I, never having seen a map of the cave other than Randy's sketch (I'd only been caving for a year), made my own sketch of Randy's sketch. Randy's map spelled the cave name correctly, but I misspelled it on my sketch of his sketch. Greg ended up publishing my sketch with the misspelled name. Anyone who knows my handwriting and has a copy of the publication can it is my script misspelling the cave's name. However, apparently James Reddell didn't recognize it. He wrote a review of the report for the Texas Caver and mis-credited Randy for the map, so everyone believed it was his. Randy thought the situation was hilarious and enjoyed playing the bad boy in it, so while we told a few people the sketch map and mistake were mine, for the most part we let people think it was Randy's typo as he wanted. Randy and I talked about naming a cave the misspelled "Braken Bat Cave" as a joke. About three year later, Randy told me about a small cave he found and I explored and surveyed it with Eric Short. I described it to Randy as a little nothing hole, and the fact that it was not a bat cave added the humor so we christened it "Braken Bat Cave" thinking it would disappear unnoticed into Texas caving history. Except that I made a biological collection on that trip, which included a tiny spider. A few years later James Reddell told me the spider was described and identified as a new species. In 1992 it was federally listed as an endangered species. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service consulted me on giving the spider a common name. I didn't care for "Braken Bat Cave spider" because of the confusion it would inevitably cause, but they went with it. I'll end with a historical footnote. "Spelean Studies Project Report No. 1" turned out to be the only report in that publication series. I think I bought my copy for $5, possibly less. About 15 years later it had become a collectors' item and sold at a TSA Auction for $100. Maybe with all of the publicity involving the spider and highway, it could fetch an even higher price today. George *************************** George Veni, Ph.D. Executive Director National Cave and Karst Research Institute 400-1 Cascades Avenue Carlsbad, New Mexico 88220-6215 USA Office: 575-887-5517 Mobile: 210-863-5919 Fax: 575-887-5523 gv...@nckri.org www.nckri.org From: Louise Power [mailto:power_lou...@hotmail.com] Sent: Sunday, October 07, 2012 07:27 To: Texas Cavers Subject: [Texascavers] Bracken spiders halt SA road construction Everytime I send one of these, I feel like I'm carrying coal to Newcastle: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/49315193/#49315193 I want to know what the guy in the t-shirt expects TDOT to do with the spiders, move them or just stomp on them. Louise
