Bear-Aware Trash Talk Poetry Challenge: Elizabeth Manning

This summer, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game held a Bear-Aware Trash Talk Poetry Challenge in which entrants had to use the words "bears," "garbage," and "shorts" in a haiku. These were the distinguished results:

First prize, from Barb Williams and family:
    "Eat my shorts!" I cried
    Backing into the garbage,
    Afraid of the bears.
Megan Sharkey got right to the point of the contest:
    Garbage on the porch
    is the best way to get a
    bear on short notice.
As did Jessica Pisa:
    Bears in undershorts
    Belong in a circus act
    Not in your garbage.
Jamie Rogers focused on the crime:
    Bear's tight alibi
    Rules out short list of suspects
    in garbage caper.
And Jessica Bowman, with the title "Divorcing Him of His Clothes," threw in some humor:
    If there's garbage here
    Unfit even for the bears
    It's his yellow shorts.

... hoping you're keeping your bears and garbage separated ... at least when they're not in poetry.