Bat (n.)

Flying mammal with thin membrane forelimb adaptive wings. Amazing number of species from fruit-eating to insectivores. All capable of landing in your hair at night.

Slang: batshit and/or batshit crazy (n. phrase intensifier), profoundly crazy-to-funny-crazy, or both—usually spoken of a person: “Hunter S. Thomson was a totally batshit crazy writer, but way batshit funny.”) Can also be said of an idea or object: “All those melting clocks of Salvador Dali are batshit-surreal-crazy. Rene Magritte's ‘Leci n'est pas une pipe' is surreally batshit funny.”

Bat feces (n.) Bat poo/Bat shit. Or more gentile: bat guano. Bat feces and Pacific islands bird poo was extensively mined as fertilizer in the 19th cent. Bat shit, high in nitrates, was also used to make gunpower—as batshit crazy as that now seems. 

Gone/going guano (n. phrase) from the Inca word for bat feces: i.e., an eyebrow raising way of declaring someone/something batshit (going guano)crazy. 

Batman (n.) aka secret identity of Bruce Wayne, living in Wayne Manor. In a secret subterranean Batcave awaits the Batmobile, a bat-motif armored & armed car of which numerous toy and real-life replicas have been made, all selling to collectors for batshit crazy prices. 

Batty (adj) [informal British] crazy; insane. Also US slang for arse. “You need a swift kick up your batty crease!”

“Bats in one's belfry” (colloquial expression; pejorative; cf batshit/insane above and/or with squirrelly (jumpy, eccentric).

Batty, Roy (“replicant” science fiction character). Memorable character from the 1982 Blade Runner movie delivering an oft lauded/quoted monologue death soliloquy: “I have seen things you people wouldn't believe. . . . All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.” Deft; batshit-heartbreaking mortality riff. 

Batty riders (n.) [slang Jamaican, British] extremely short shorts worn by women so as to expose part of the buttocks. From a lyric of Jamaican reggae singer Buju Banton: “Shorts hitch up pon your saddle, ride up pon your back/Esposing your property. . . . All fruits ripe, so mek them gwaan chat. . . .”

bat (n) A smooth wooden or metal club used in the game of baseball. Used to hit, or try to hit a pitched baseball. Satchel Paige: “My pitching philosophy is simple—keep the ball way from the bat.” FYI: Preferred ash wood for bats is threatened by the emerald ash borer a beetle thriving due to global warming. Baseball bats are often used as club-like weapons: to no effect on the emerald ash borer beetle, let alone on global warming. 

bat, cricket (n.) used by batsmen (not to be confused with Batman above) in the confusing British/India sport of cricket. “My first bat was shaped of a coconut branch and from that day all I wanted to do was to be a cricketer.” — Brian Lara (Trinidadian international cricketer). Also: “I tend to think that cricket is the greatest thing that God ever created on earth--certainly greater than sex, although sex isn't too bad either.” Brit. playwright Harold Pinter

bat poem (lit.) Lewis Carrol's Mad Hatter famously recites: Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!/How I wonder what you're at!/Up above the world you fly, Like a tea tray in the sky” Ditty also sung by a woman in the Batman series while trapped in a vase with pebbles dropping on her simulating Chinese water torture. 

Bat out of Hell (n. phrase intensifier; idiom) Moving very fast, as in: “She ran like a Bat out of Hell from a bat trying to land in her hair.” See also, 70s song Bat Out of Hell by American singer Meat Loaf.

Vampire Bat (n.) a mouse-size bat that feeds on mammal blood—occasionally sleeping humans. If awakened by a landing Vampire bat it is advised to run like a Bat out of Hell. Note: Dracula and other vampires are known to imitate Vampire bats as a convenient way of approaching a sleeping victim. 

Bat Stew (n.) preparation, cooking, eating of such. Various kinds of bats make a delicious stew; well, mostly. Fruit bats have notes of fruitiness (fig fruit mostly) with an animating tang of fresh tree-based moss. While common vampire bats have a haunting nose of/or light garnet bouquet of pomegranate; pungent aromatics while cooking include odors reminiscent of urine and feces—which can be somewhat reduced by adding garlic and beer during cooking. Wings are generally removed in preparation prior to cooking. Nevertheless the bat is cooked without removing internal organs (although when deep fried the entire bat is cooked and consumed, including crisped wings). Overall, the flavor of cooked bat is said to be similar to chicken. Be aware: some bat breeds consume quantities of cycad seeds resulting in accumulated toxins leading to neurological diseases in humans.