Unsuspecting man picks up garbage to receive bat bite in TD

Here is the bat that was recovered after the bite.

By Tom Peterson 

The Dalles, Ore., Aug. 14, 2023 - A local man thought he was just grabbing some garbage off his apartment door when that garbage started moving and bit him in the finger on Sunday, Aug. 13 at about 6 p.m.

The 71-year-old said he immediately threw the wiggling garbage on the ground and put a foot on it and then saw that the tip of his ring finger on the right hand was bleeding from two fang punctures. 

And that garbage? 

It was a bat about the size of a pack of cigarettes. 

“I thought it was a wad of black tape or some trash or something,” he told CCCNews.  “So, I reached out to grab the trash off the door and got bit on the tip of my ring finger on the right hand. I threw it down and put a foot on him. I immediately squeezed hard on my finger to get the blood out - I can’t believe it. I got bit by a bat.”

The man asked the woman for whom he caretakes at Chenowith Rim Apartments to retrieve a shopping bag from inside the apartment so they could preserve the creature.

He used a washcloth to pick up the bat, and he put it in the bag and then eventually the refrigerator.

The man told CCCNews that he called both the Emergency Rooms in Hood River and The Dalles asking for advice on what he needed to do to treat the injury but could get no clear answer. 

He also went to the internet and came to the conclusion that at minimum he would need to get a tetanus shot. 

But it was the excellent help at Wasco County 9-1-1 Dispatch that got him the right information. 

She told him to call the North Central Public Health Districts’ communicable disease phone number. 

So he did.

But it was the off hours and he again got the 9-1-1 dispatcher. 

“Didn’t I just talk to you,” he said recalling the conversation. 

The dispatcher then reached out to Zach Haley with North Central, and he called the injured man. 

Haley directed the man to Adventist Health the Gorge in The Dalles where the right injections were available to him to protect against rabies.  

The man told CCCNews he received 8 shots of gamma globulin in his thigh, a tetanus shot and the first of a four shots for rabies in his arm. 

The bat was turned over to Haley today, Aug. 14, and was packed in ice and shipped to Oregon Health Sciences Lab in Corvallis where a disection will be administered to determine if the bat had rabies.

“If its positive, I’ll have to take three more shots,” he said.