in a pickle vs knee-deep in the Big Muddy

in a pickle

prep
  • In a difficult situation or a troubling quandary. 

knee-deep in the Big Muddy

adj
  • Stuck in a predicament; mired in a difficult situation, especially one resulting from poor judgment or bad leadership. 

How often have the words in a pickle and knee-deep in the Big Muddy occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )