When Pam Hicks woke up Saturday morning, she had no idea that she'd be having camel for lunch.
While waiting in line for Dunbar's annual Critter Dinner, Hicks posted to Facebook saying "Gonna eat me some critters. Yum! Yum!"
And she did.
"I wish I had more alligator," Hicks, who is visiting family in West Virginia with her husband Randy, said.
In order to go back up and get more, she would have had to wait in a line that stretched out the door.
Christina Ratliff and Nicki Algée had been waiting in line for 40 minutes and were only halfway to the door.
They were among at least 2,000 people who showed up this year, more than the usual number of 1,200 to 1,500. (On our app? See video here)
Ratliff, of North Carolina, and Algée were most excited about eating camel and kangaroo, but were wary of any of the fish and alligator.
"I can go out and shoot one myself and eat it, but I don't want to." Algée, of Savannah, Georgia, said. "Gator's not my thing."
Once they made it inside, they were greeted with a long line of trays, each containing their own exotic animals.
Signs marked all of the trays, and each one contained a little picture of the animal, so people could get an image of that kangaroo as they chewed.
There was Italian rabbit bake, lamb stew, catfish nuggets, boar sausage, wild boar stew, buffalo, crayfish tail, frog legs, alligator nuggets, kangaroo burgers, camel burgers and elk, among some more traditional dishes.
But of course, people have their favorites.
"The frog legs run out fast," said Joanne Cornell, a volunteer.
A group of Boy Scouts from Troop 46 were among those who counted frog as their favorite.
All of them took a sample of every meat that was offered, except for Jarod Fulks, 13, who skipped out on the goat chili.
Serving that chili was Kanawha County Commissioner Dave Hardy, who served goat testicles last year.
Hardy has been volunteering at the Critter Dinner for three years, and he's only encountered one animal that he couldn't quite stomach: barbecue crawdad.
"You could see the antenna," he said.
The master cook for all this food is a man named Mike Durham.
Durham has been cooking the exotic meats for 16 years.
The town orders the meat online, having it shipped from ranches across the United States.
All of the meat is USDA-approved, and each year they try to make sure to get something really exotic.
This year, organizers couldn't get any bear, Rocky Mountain oysters or snake, so they settled with camel and kangaroo.
"This stuff ain't cheap," Durham said.
There is an art to cooking exotic meats. Durham said that you can't cook the meats for too long because a lot of the time the meat is lean. You also have to tone down the taste a little with a lot of seasoning.
Dunbar mayor Terry Greenlee liked his two-humped meat and his marsupial.
"The camel tastes good," Greenlee said. "The kangaroo tastes like sirloin steak."
As diners ate animals more likely to appear in a zoo than on a paper plate, they were able to listen to music from Willie D & No Regrets - a band name that probably echoed what most people were saying as they asked for alligator nuggets.
"I absolutely love the happiness in this room," Hardy said. "It feels like West Virginia."
Reach Daniel Desrochers at dan.desrochers@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-4886 or follow @drdesrochers on Twitter.