Hence, perhaps, the expression "hot dog"

I have just been reading Plus ça Change - The Story of French from Charlemagne to The Cirque du Soleil, by Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow. It's full of interesting facts about French, its history and the way in which it has spread around the globe. Among the better pieces of trivia is the explanation of why a North American burrowing rodent is known as a "gopher" (on p.102):

Gofer (gopher) is a deformation of gauffre (waffle), which described the waffle-like holes that prairie dogs dug.

Is that not delightful?