Rabid Bat Attacks, Bites Guitar-Strumming Man On Neck, Bat Dispatched By Campers

A man was attacked and bitten by a rabid bat recently while playing the guitar with other campers in a Oregon forest. The shocking bat attack was caught on tape.

Derrick Skou of Greshman was strumming away on his guitar with some camper friends when a lone bat came out of nowhere and sank its fangs into his neck like a vampire. Little did the man know, the creature had rabies.

Before the clan started jamming at the Clackamas County campsite, the decision was made to make a video recording of the outdoors session they had rehearsed so well together. Luckily they did, because face it; the story of being attacked and bitten on the neck – of all places – in broad daylight by a bat, would be a hard story to sell. And the vampire bat theory can be ruled out here. More on that later.

“This thing came out of nowhere. I was thinking it was a good day until then. Something hit me. I was concentrating on staying in time and all that, and it hit me here, and I kind of saw something out of my peripheral vision. And then it’s there, and then it just bit me.”

First, the rabid bat latched onto the Skou’s shirt, clambered up his neck before the man tried to take evasive action and shoo it away, to no avail. By then, it had bitten guitar player’s neck according to KOMO News.

And like a nagging mosquito, with a laser-like focus on its quarry, the ambitious bat made several more passes to get another helping of the man’s tasty plasma, so it seemed, but failed to find its mark.

The group tracked the bat to its perch on a nearby tree and took a number of photos before they agreed to kill the bat using a BB gun and take it in for testing.

“Whether we would get in trouble for shooting it, and I said well, it drew first blood. We need to take care of this thing,” Skou said.

It’s unknown why the man was a target of the swoop and bite, but here are a number of possible explanations:

Like Kanye West, whose disdain for the paparazzi is known, perhaps, the bat bit guitar player because he doesn’t like unauthorized pictures taken of him.

Here’s another theory about the unprovoked bat attack: the winged carnivore is not a fan of the music played by the “Honky Tonk Man.”

On what it felt like to be attacked and bitten by a bat, Skou described the brief, but memorable encounter.

“It was like a cold dog nose. It was a cold bat nose, mouth, whatever. It didn’t sting. I wasn’t injected with anything. It was just a cold bite.”

The campers collected the bat’s carcass and took it to the Clackamas County Environmental Health Department. However, Skou said officials there declined to test the bat. They then took it to Multnomah County health officials, where they confirmed the bat was rabid.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (or CDC), rabies is a “medical urgency but not an emergency.” Treatment typically involves a series of shots/injections. The standard vaccines administered are Rabies Postexposure and human Rabies Immune Globulin.

As to whether the winged attacker was a vampire bat, the short answer would be no, according to National Geographic, which says the common vampire bat lives in Mexico, Central and South America.

And because the majority of bats in the United States don’t attack humans (except rabid bats which have compromised nervous systems). Instead, the culprit could have been any number of non-blood-sucking species.

Thankfully, the man attacked by the rabid bat sought treatment immediately and was a sport about it during his seconds-long harrowing moment in the Oregon woods.

[Image via: Pinterest]