blue canary
n.— «“This is a different kind of training, because usually an officer rushes right in. Here, we get them to approach slowly and size up the situation,” said Chinn, a former narcotics officer who first got anti-terrorism training to deal with threats from Colombian drug lords. “We don’t want firefighters to use police officers like blue canaries. If a firefighter counts down until he finds the last police officer, that’s not a good thing.”…“Identify. Isolate. Notify. Stay uphill, upwind, upstream and at least 300 feet away.…Don’t be a blue canary. Don’t be a coptometer.”» —“Terror Incident Rewrites Police Manuals” by Monica Rhor Miami Herald (Florida) Nov. 11, 2001. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Julie in Fort Pierce, Florida, recalls that on sweltering days her mother would declare the weather was hotter than Billy Blue Blazes! The word blazes is a euphemism for “hell,” as in hot as blazes. The blue in blue blazes has long been used as an...
Andrea in West Palm Beach, Florida, recalls a little ditty that her father would recite to get her out of bed in the morning: When in the morning you throw moments away, you can’t make them up in the course of the day. Or you can hurry and...