By Lauretta Carroll

The summer heat has taken its toll and many of us are now recovering from the "Dogs Days" of summer. These are the hottest, most sultry days of summer. In the United States they usually fall between early July and early September.

This started me thinking. Why "Dog Days"? Why not "Turtle Days"? Turtles love to sit on the rocks and bask in the sun. It seems like the perfect time of year for that activity. Or how about "Dolphin Days"? Who wouldn't want to be romping in the cool, frothy ocean?

Well, there are no dolphins and no turtles, just dogs and a few other animal idioms that color our language and help us make a point, even if we don't really have one.

It turns out that they are called Dogs Days because we make the connection between our own discomfort with the heat to those of a panting (sweating) dog. Okay, so I get it, but now, as another idiom relates, I have a bee in my bonnet (something that irks me to distraction) about other idioms and their origins in which we find references to animals big and small.

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