Hero Bat Dies Trying to Save Oregon Forest from Jammin' Guitarist
A noble but ultimately doomed bat gave its last full measure of devotion last week as it swooped in and bit a guitarist in the neck while he was pickin' and grinnin' with some friends in the Oregon woods.
According to KVAL-TV, Derrick Skou was jamming with his friends at the curiously-named Pinhead Creek campground in Clackamas County southeast of Portland when a bat—apparently weary of Skou's upbeat acoustic folk-pop stylings—flew out of the trees and landed on Skou's shirt near his shoulder.
The bat then scurried up the shirt and bit the guitarist on the neck.
"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 then flew off into a tree before circling and attacking Skou twice more. A friend of Skou's finally shot and killed the bat, which later tested positive for rabies, with a BB gun.
The remarkably good-humored Skou—who, in a perfect world, would have turned from a woodsy folky guitarist following the attack into some sort of gnarly, heavy metal vampire shredder who rises from his coffin every night to totally smash your skull with wicked appregios and squealing harmonics—says that he has had to endure a fairly miserable series of rabies shots but is otherwise fine.
The bat, alas, has likely been denied the Viking funeral it deserves and probably wound up in a bag of medical waste.
Godspeed, heroic rabid heavy metal bat.
Image via YouTube
