Derrick Skou went camping with some of his buddies last weekend at Pinhead Creek in Clackamas County, Ore. They were just sitting around, playing some tunes when a bat swooped in, landed on Skou's chest, crawled up to his neck, and bit him. "Holy shit!" you hear one of his friends say. "That was a new one!!!"

Residents of Westchester County, N.Y. have been dealing with a severe uptick in the bat population, according to CBS New York. August has seen nearly 50 cases of bat invasions with no real end in sight.

Sure, it was freezing and awful during the polar vortex but it could be worse: You could live in a place where it's so hot out that tens of thousands of dead bats are falling from the sky and then rotting on the ground.

As if you needed another reason to avoid bats this Halloween. Scientists have finally solved the mystery of where the SARS pandemic of the early 2000s originated: everyone's favorite flying mammal.

A man attacked by a rabid bat in the Mojave National Preserve will probably die if not found and treated by health officials. Eyewitnesses say the bat landed on the mystery man's neck outside the desert park's book store at the Kelso Depot between Las Vegas and Los Angeles. The man wandered off, oblivious, and the bat fell dead from rabies.

Should you care to hear about the vanishing of bats, islands that melt under the relentless hand of time, and the problems facing modern birds, then this is the week for you. I even managed to scrounge up a bit of cave-related news, although I should warn you now, it isn't very good news. I never promised you I would only bring you rosy-colored cave information; I only promised to talk about caves as much as I possibly could before someone at Gawker Headquarters got wise and fired me.

A little girl in Spencer, Mass., has learned the hard way that adults are nothing more than slightly taller know-it-all children, after an encounter with a bat and a woman who knows an awful lot about bats for someone who knows nothing about bats has resulted in a series of summer fun rabies treatments.

Bats, America's most precious bat resource, have been dying like crazy over the past few years (a devastating 5.5 million in the Eastern U.S. since 2007) thanks to something called White-Nose Syndrome, which is not a euphemism for cocaine addiction but, oh boy, does it sound like it.

HPV boys! Chest X-rays! Aging secrets! Bat disease! Old pacemakers! Filthy surface! Coffee protection! Super broccoli! And gurl U no U better keep taking that birth control! It's your Wednesday Health Watch, where we watch your health—in technicolor!

Five-year-old Zoe Zachrison and her mom were shopping in the frozen food section at a Minnesota Walmart when suddenly a bat swooped down and bit Zoe on the leg, traumatizing her forever and requiring her to undergo painful rabies shots.

It wouldn't be August without a monster attack, so we're going to try to invent one. Just what is this flying beast attacking passengers on a flight from Madison, Wisconsin, to Atlanta? No one knows!

For a harrowing look into the souls of riot-swamped Britons, check out the "Movers and Shakers" list of Amazon.co.uk's "Sports & Leisure" section. What does it say about America that the only time Britons care about our national pastime is when they need to bash heads in? [via Guardian]

Old galaxies! Nabokov butterflies! Milk safety! Insomnia relief! Cell timers! Solar sails! Bat naps! Math extinctions! Ovulation dreams! Breast chips! It's your Wednesday Science Watch, where we watch science—wackily, come on!

Yes, New York has bedbugs. But Los Angeles has rabid bats. So.

Not the kind of story you want to read at 2:00am on Friday the 13th, but here it is: Rabid vampire bats are attacking a Peruvian village! Four children have died of the disease, and over 500 have been bitten.

Monster making! Russian warming! Frog mountains! Bat extinction! Multiple sclerosis! Hurricane season! Quantum entanglement! Pet meds! And Polish geologists! It's your Friday Science Watch, where we watch your science—while screwing in a light bulb, all alone!

Billy the Exterminator describes an outcome of bat infestation that is among the more disgusting things ever uttered. Submitted for the approval of The Midnight Society, I call this story The Tale of the Poo Covered Congregants.

It's probably too early for Warner Bros. to start rolling out the promotional stunts, but we can think of worse ways to build buzz for Dark Knight than by releasing swarms of actual bats around the city. And even better if they're bold enough to do it indoors. [Curbed LA]