“Bark up the wrong tree”in other languages

Same idea, different pictures

English comes from American raccoon hunting in the early 1800s: dogs chase the animal at night and bark at the foot of the tree it climbed, sometimes the wrong one. German auf dem Holzweg sein is a wrong path: a Holzweg was a track cut only to haul timber out, which ends in the middle of the forest.

Italian mistakes fireflies for lanterns, prendere lucciole per lanterne. Norwegian has gone out cycling, å være ute og sykle, far from the matter at hand. French pokes its finger in its eye, se mettre le doigt dans l'œil, which is just as painful and just as wrong.