She chortled in her joy.

I love your limericks, ye loony laddies and lassies!

Nice rhyme sets: John, Don Juan, pants on; donators, taters, tomaters; Sandy, dandy, randy; Spoke, joke, choke; stole them, molemen; Louise, seas, buoys; Marvin, carvin', starvin'.

Great themes, too -- vain men who forget their pants and busty babes demonstrating their natural flotation devices (nice little dashes o' bawdy, there!); a squeaky-clean limerick ABOUT writing naughty limericks; the comic violence of Wabbit v. Martian, pirate v. telephone pole, and leprechaun v. lawnmower; my little brother's lice problem as reported by one of his students; and a lovely jab at our Idiot-in-Chief.

Oh, man. This is hard. Why did I set this up as a contest? I knew I had clever friends and family, and how accurately did I think I was going to be able to measure my laughter? This is like being a judge in the Limerick Olympics, with measurements down to the milligiggles.

I know what you're saying. "Don't flatter yourself we're that into your silly contest, Marie -- especially with such a lame prize." I know, I know -- I'm just projecting myself onto you. The only thing I think I'm very good at is writing, so I get competitive in writing contests.

To make my job easier, I ruled out all limericks that strayed from the standard meter. Of the three that remained, the one that I thought had the cleverest rhyme was the one by Patrushka:

How happy the Kiva donators
As they lend to the man selling taters!
Now he can expand -
With our helping hand
He can purchase a box of tomaters!

So contact me, Patrushka, [adazzle (dot) dim (at) gmail (dot) com] so I can send you the book!

Should Patrushka fail to perform his/her duties as Lord-High Limerick Writer, his/her little green hat will pass to the two runners-up:

Sharon:

There once were a martian named Marvin,
Who always was fixin' on carvin'
A Rabbit so sweet
And with humor, to beat,
But we all knows he'll be long a starvin'

Anonymous (Steve? Kelly? write and let me know who you are):

There once was a blogger from Sandy
Who thought writing lim'ricks was dandy
She stewed and she stewed
But it all came out lewd
And her friends ran off, yelling, "Too randy!"

For more laughs, here are the winners of this year's Deseret News Limerick Contest. My dad shamelessly tried to pass them off as his own:

Oh, look, it's a sad orange cone,
It looks lost, and afraid, and alone.
No wait, there's its brother,
And another, and another,
I'm surrounded, they're starting to clone!

I was cookin' ribs back on the deck,
When I stumbled, and near broke my neck.
Since I've vowed ne'er to curse,
I said nothing worse
Than, "Flip! What the scrud! Oh, my heck!"

Thanks again for participating, everyone (even you, Dad). Laughter is no small gift, and I thank'ee kindly from the bottom of my funny bone. May there be a pot of gold and/or a handsome Irish sailor at the end of your rainbow.