ricardo00 wrote:
I think the expression should be, happy as an otter with a clam meal.
"This phrase is actually a part of the bigger phrase "happy as a clam in high water" or "at high tide." Historians aren't sure when this longer saying first appeared, but they generally agree that the shortened one was in use starting around 1830. In 1840, John G. Saxe used the truncated version in quotations in his poem, Sonnet to a Clam, suggesting that he was repeating something that already was commonly said.-"