Consider the Grackle Bug

     This defense mechanism is employed daily because the grackle bug’s rank on the food chain is, like most desert insects, at the bottom. In the wild, their deep-blue shells act as armour and camouflage¹ when the sand takes on a cool hue on desert nights. Thus concealed, the grackle bug skittishly scavenges for any ancillary morsels that may have been left undevoured by its desert superiors throughout the day. Needless to say that as both diner and entrée, it’s tough eating if you’re a grackle bug.

     But they are themselves good eating. Considered a delicacy² by some, grackle bugs are most commonly consumed kebab-style. I could illustrate the culinary process for you, but it’s not a description that would likely survive my editor’s pen; so, I can summarize by saying that the best grackle bugs are lanced on a toothpick and cooked over an open fire. The largest vendor of grackle bug on a stick is a food stall in Sakhmet called Lost Desert Foods. On a good day, LDF yields 540 pounds of salted, roasted, and skewered grackle bugs³ to rapacious Neopians who shell out approximately 287 NP for each sticky mouthful—only slightly more expensive than a month of suppers at Cockroach Towers.

     Grackle bugs are served in other, more extravagant fashions besides the common on-a-stick way: They can be baked into stuffing and pumped inside gigantic turkeys. They can be battered, fried, doused in mayonnaise, and garnished with honeyed walnuts. They can be processed (shell-and-all) like jerky into strips of steak. They can be ground into powder and mixed into a paste as a pseudomedical remedy⁴ and even brewed into drinks at certain coffee shops to create foul-smelling concoctions thought to clear your sinuses.

     As nourishment, grackle bugs have been snarfed down by the larger Neopian population since the summer of Y3, antedating the custom of adopting and caring for them as petpets by nearly four full years. Now live grackle bugs are sold in Neopia’s global marketplaces for between 10,000 and 20,000 NP. Despite their monetary value, however, they are—particularly in their natural blue state when their torpid green eyes gape at you pathetically—unpopular.

     Grackle bugs exhibit the same levels of sentience, emotional agency, and physiological aversion to pain as Kadoaties, Feepits, and society’s other more cherished petpets. They have no inherent disadvantages in Symol holes, Neovian catacombs, or miniature Battledomes. For whatever their accolades may be worth, even the Petpet Protection League gave the grackle bug (albeit its less-edible Maraquan counterpart) its due recognition in Y9.⁵ In fact, the only outstanding attributes I can think of that differentiate grackle bugs from other petpets besides their popularity are (a) their edibility, and (b) the marketing of their edibility.⁶ Follow that thread a bit further and you’ll discover that there is no objective demarcation between the grackle bugs that are eaten and those who are not.

     So then here is a question that is all but unavoidable when exchanging 287 NP for a grackle bug on a stick or 15,000 NP for a live one: Is it alright to cook a sentient creature just for our gustatory pleasure? What does “alright” even mean in this context? Is it all a matter of personal choice? I’m not trying to give you a PPL-like screed here—at least I don’t think so. I’m trying, rather, to process and articulate some of the troubling questions that arise when you consider the grackle bug’s peculiar occupation in the grander scheme of Neopian culture.

     The truth is that if you permit yourself to think that a grackle bug, like any petpet, can suffer but would prefer not to, the grackle bug-eating industry begins to take on aspects of a more sinister business that distinguishes friends from fodder through subjective appraisals and self-serving rationales. Considered this way, the grackle bug market, whether you participate in it or not, is indicative of the way we construct hierarchies and systems to fill our appetite so long as we ignore our guts.

     Does that sentence seem like more pointless navel-gazing? Or a non sequitur? If so, exactly why? Or what about this one: Does the grackle bug’s narrative challenge the cafeteria-style ethics we abide by while about our habitual business around Neopia? My own immediate reaction is that this article’s ideas are extreme—yet, the reason it seems extreme to me appears to be that I believe petpets are less morally important than Neopets;⁷ and to defend that belief, even to myself, I have to perform an exhausting amount of ethical acrobatics (a soft term for cognitive dissonance) to imagine that Neopets and petpets intrinsically exist on separate moral planes.⁸

     Given my lack of culinary sophistication and familiarity with contemporary Neopian trends, I’m curious about whether the reader can identify with any of these reflections and discomforts. I am also concerned not to come off as shrill or preachy when what I really am is confused. And while these queries are sincere, they precede many tangential dangers that I am unequipped to confront in this column, so it’s probably best to stop the public discussion right here. There are limits to what even interested persons can ask of each other. 𝓫

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     1. N.B. This information is an “educated guess” and open to disagreement, though it should be known firstly that grackle bugs are iconic for their timidity, and secondly that (as any owner of a pet grackle bug can attest) certain noises or movements will elicit defensive burrowing. This theory would also account for the fact that blue grackle bugs are the only naturally occurrent type in the desert—it stands to reason that glowing grackle bugs, for instance, would have a harder time keeping a low nocturnal profile.

     2. I use the word “delicacy” here with some delicacy (no pun). By definition, a dish can only earn such a gastronomical adjective once it has accrued some amount of rapport over time to be labelled as such. One must then imagine that consuming grackle bugs was locally practised long before Brucey B’s coin effectively introduced Lost Desert cuisine to the modern world and thereby grandfathering the dish’s prestige on a global scale.

     3. This estimate was calculated by observation and arithmetic: The purveyor of said establishment reports restocking his merchandise at roughly eight-minute intervals, when an average of three hot-off-the-spit grackle bugs become available for purchase. The stall operates endlessly around the clock, meaning approximately 540 grackle bugs (weighing in at 1 pound each) are cooked and sold each day. This estimate does not include the daily volume of burnt grackle bugs which are hawked at discount.

     4. A bottle of grackle powder is going for a few thousand Neopoints at the time of this writing, but for all its properties it may as well be synonymous with Hissi oil. Buy some and see for yourself.

     5. Like many partisans in complex moral disputes, the PPL is largely comprised of fanatics who raise issues at random. Their ranks of arbitrarily selected honorees have not included the grackle bug since Y9 despite its mass consumption.

     6. Factoid: The petpet store in Sakhmet markets grackle bugs as “desert friends” and is located just behind the food stall that bayonets the same creatures en masse. Intentionally or not, this wheel-greasing convenience makes it easy to grab a bite with your new “desert friend” on your way home; plus, it all happens in less time than it takes your conscience to form an opinion.

     7. Meaning a lot less important, since we are not talking about the value of one petpet’s life versus the value of one Neopet’s, but rather the value of one petpet’s life versus one person’s taste for a particular menu item.

     8. This statement could fork into infinite (hence footnoted) avenues of conversations, including how we can objectively or otherwise rank one petpet over another (such as a Feepit over a grackle bug); one grackle bug over another grackle bug; one Neopet over another Neopet; et cetera. But I am not here to offend PC sensibilities so, as I am about to mention in the main text, I will leave it at that.