Road Kill Cook-Off

(CNN) -- Thousands of people converge on the small town of Marlinton, West Virginia, each fall for a feast whose main ingredients were unlucky enough to crawl, slither or lurk too close to a speeding car.

It's RoadKill Cook-Off time, where past years' crowds have sampled dishes like Pothole Possum Stew, Fricasseed Wabbit Gumbo and Smeared Hog with Groundhog Gravy.

Welcome to the world of unusual -- dare we say weird? -- food festivals.

Sure, you can find plenty of culinary celebrations dedicated to everything from rhubarb to seafood, but there are also options to satisfy your cravings for rattlesnake, fried pig intestines or garlic ice cream.

The RoadKill Cook-Off is so popular that it fills all the motels and hotels in the county when it takes place on the last Saturday in September, said David Cain, who runs the event and samples all the dishes.

"There are some that are better than others, but I've never really had anything that I really didn't like," Cain said. "But there was one year they cooked a rattlesnake in some kind of stew, and ... there was no way I could taste that one." Photo See photos from these unusual food festivals »

The RoadKill Cook-Off began in 1991, when organizers thought it might boost attendance at the main event: the Pocahontas County Autumn Harvest Festival.

Did it ever.

About 10,000 people from all over the country came to last year's gathering, Cain said. All dishes featured in the festival must have animals commonly found dead on the side of the road -- such as deer, squirrels and snakes -- as their main ingredient. But the meat doesn't have to be actual roadkill.
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"Judges will deduct points for every chipped tooth resulting from gravel not removed from the RoadKill," the official rules warn. "All judges have been tested for cast-iron stomachs and have sworn under oath to have no vegetarian tendencies."