In June 1969, just a few weeks after I graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from Auburn University, I was hired by the Centers for Disease Control to measure virus neutralizing antibody in the thousands of serial bleeds needed to license a new generation of cell culture derived rabies vaccines. Since 1935, immunity to rabies had been measured by the survival of mice after intra-cerebral inoculation of live virus mixed with serum from a vaccinee—a process so tedious and hazardous that it would often prompt the technician to seek employment elsewhere. In an act that can only be described as scientific naivete, my response to this work was to suggest a simpler, faster, in vitro method—the rapid fluorescent focus inhibition test (RFFIT). In turn, my efforts to understand the dynamics of virus neutralization gave me an interest in immunopathology and a fascination with the differing disease progression in animals infected with rabies virus isolates from different animal hosts. The tools of molecular epidemiology—monoclonal antibodies and nucleotide sequencing—allowed me to distinguish viruses from different animal reservoirs and describe ecologic and geographic constraints that could limit their distribution. Rabies samples from these studies became the basis of a curated virus repository used to investigate unusual or unexpected cases of rabies in humans and other animals—investigations that documented incubation periods of up to seven years in humans, identified two reclusive bat species as an unexpected source for human rabies infections, and described a still-ongoing/still unresolved bat associated outbreak of rabies with >100 cases in terrestrial animals in Flagstaff, Arizona. I hope this account of my unanticipated career as a rabies virologist entices others to study this ancient viral disease. There is so much left for us to learn!