Clam Lore

Clams - The All Purpose Bivalve

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There are clams of legend. The comic strip B.C., by Johnny Hart, has featured clams walking on two legs for years. They are known to give out with the cry “clams got legs!” for no real reason. Whether these clams are cousin to the famed traveling Oysters of The Walrus and the Carpenter (by Lewis Carroll), only the old salt knows. But Clams is a SpongeBob SquarePants episode. It’s Season 3.

Here are some other famous clams.

The Giant Clam That Drowns Divers

It’s hard to find good deep-sea divers anymore, the Bluto-like waddlers with a hose coming out the top of their heads in their deep-sea diving suits. Inevitably one of these poor suckers would find a bag of platinum in some old hulk nobody even remembered, and in his glee he’d take that one last step on the sea floor and CLAMP generally his right foot would get grabbed by a clam the size of a wading pool, with elegant rippling in the shell.
    “Mpphelppp! Mwhuuphggohlllp!”

    “What’s *CRACKLE* -at Jim? We’re not –“

    “Rrmuiii splruhdddd LKPPPPP! LKPPPPP strrrfgh …”


Naah the clam had won. We all knew it. Poor Jim would stay, thrusting his treasure at the surface as though it were God yet trapped by a homely bottom-dwelling bivalve, all his riches gone to naught.

We memorialize Jim’s fate in thousands of fish tanks, nationally. Even if Jim’s gone to Neptune’s deep that clam is still there, flapping open incessantly, bragging.

The Angry Clam

The dangerous Angry Clam must be fed. It snarls for satiety, happy only strained at the seams. Angry Clams are encouraged daily through skilled practices too numerous to detail here, but once a Clam has been Angered it wants what it wants. You must give it your all.

The Chorus Clams

These happy fellows are regulars in any children’s entertainment set under the sea. Clams don’t get a lot of speaking parts but do bounce side-to-side and flap their shells to support the general merriment. You can expect clam Muppets any time the show is under water. Wait, that’s not really true. Avenue Q made some dough. No, there are lots of clam Muppets because Muppet producers cannot stay away from something that flaps its mouth that good.

The Lucky Clam

It is happy as a clam at high tide. Remember: Eat Clams, Live Longer.

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