Rabid bat bit man jamming on guitar

Derrick Skou, from Gresham, Oregon, was bitten by a rabid bat while camping in Clackamas County. “This thing came out of nowhere,” he said. “I was thinking it was a good day until then.” Skou was playing guitar, and jamming with friends at a campsite when it happened.



The attack was caught on video. Skou says he wanted to record it because he felt they were playing well. “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,” Skou said. The bat latched onto his shirt, near his shoulder, then crawled up to his neck.

"It was like a cold dog nose,” Skou said as he described his brief encounter with the bat. “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 bat then camped in a tree before coming down twice more to try and attack Skou. Fortunately, he was only bitten once before a friend shot the bat with a BB gun.


YouTube link.

"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. The bat ended up being rabid, something Skou only found out after taking it to Multnomah County health officials. He had first tried to take it to the Clackamas County Environmental Health Department, but he says they declined to test the bat.

With news video.