Perfect For Your Halloween Table!

I've learned to eat a lot of weird-looking things. I've eaten baby octopi. I've eaten escargot. I've even eaten the weird kitchen-sink casserole that my aunt makes that literally makes us all sick every single year. But I think my limits have been tested with the silkie chicken, the completely black-meat chicken.

A genetic mutation called fibromelanosis gives silkies their unusual coloring. Silkies, unlike most breeds of chicken, have plumage that feels more like fur than feathers. They also have five toes as opposed to a normal chicken's four. Does any of this sounding appetizing? We didn't think so.

Silkies look adorable on the surface. They are tiny-dog levels of fluffy and, according to chicken experts, make really great pets. Lissa Lucas of mypetchicken.com told Modern Farmer that the silkies are essentially the golden retrievers of the chicken world. "You want your pets to be affectionate, and silkies are basically love incarnate."

That is all well and good...until you want to eat them. Though the chickens are usually bred and sold for their fluffy exterior, their flesh and bones are completely black, making them look a little less like a friendly pet and more like Khaleesi's dragons from Game of Thrones.

As you can see, they move pretty quickly from being cute:

To terrifying:

In Chinese medicine, silkies are thought to increase female fertility and provide nutrients for developing fetuses. Modern Farmer's Laurie Woolever picked one of the small, bony birds up for some chicken soup, which she reported nursed her sick son back to health.

Why aren't you people terrified by this? We has humans have developed a tendency not to eat what we shouldn't. It's a basic survival skill. And you see a black chicken and think, "Oh, totally fine. GO FOR IT." No, I think I'll skip out on this and hope I don't get badgered into it as some sort of health-food craze.

I can't honestly imagine this is appropriate for any meal but a Halloween feast.

Images: Instagram/lauriewoolever, Flickr/Shubert Ciencia