The Graphic Grackle: What’s In a Name?
Sometimes, when you are trying to build a presence online, it is useful to have a name that is more memorable and fun than your given or “government” name. Around 2019, I decided I needed a recognizable username and theme I could use to bring everything associated with my online presence under one (feathery, iridescent)umbrella. I settled on theGraphicGrackle. Since I started using this moniker, I‘ve gotten almost exclusively positive reactions, or at least bemused ones. This is especially true when I do events here in Austin, where grackles are one of the city’s unofficial mascots, second only to the Mexican free-tailed bat. For those who are curious, this is the story behind the name.
First things first, let me offer a crash course for those of you who don’t have the fortune to live within the grackle’s large migratory range and those of you who have been mistakenly identifying them as crows for your whole life because of their black plumage. There are seventeen species of birds known as grackles, and they are in the same family as meadowlarks and cowbirds. It turns out, they are closer relatives of songbirds like blue jays than the corvids with whom they share many visual similarities. Nor are they true “blackbirds” a term that is highly unhelpful and used colloquially to refer to almost any bird that is black regardless of its species. True blackbirds are found almost exclusively in Europe, but I digress.
The Grackle’s full cloak of black iridescent feathers often causes this confusion, although young grackles as well as biologically female grackles are usually light or dark brown. Grackles do share a familiar uncanny shrewdness that many birds possess and can pass the fabled “Aesop’s Test” that comes from a fable involving a crow. They are native to much of South, Central, and North America, and in some countries, they are seen as lucky or featured in local mythology.
In the US, many people don’t even know what a grackle is. They call it by the wrong name or don’t know it at all except as a pest, primarily because they have the audacity to exist in human cities in large numbers. There are even rumors about them being invasive despite them being native to the Americas. Not to mention accusations of them being terrible parents who abandon their young in other songbirds’ nests, a behavior associated with the cowbird but not to my knowledge ever observed in grackles who tend to live in large family groups. They can even be observed protecting their nests from other predatory birds in the spring, performing acrobatic feats as they chase predatory birds like kestrels and hawks away from their young.
So, why choose the grackle as a mascot if it is often seen as an annoying pest? Well, for one, I have occasionally been seen as a pest myself, but to explain, I need to tell you a bit of my epic™ backstory. I graduated college in 2015 with a Bachelor’s in animation and a heart full of ambitious dreams. I was going to move out to California, get a job at a studio, and, if I was lucky in a few years maybe even head my own animated show. I had everything planned out, a strategy, and even a cheap place to stay with a family friend while I got on my feet. It was going to be great.
Then, as often happens, real life had other plans. Getting a job in the animation industry in California proved to be a far more difficult and intimidating task to accomplish than it was to simply write down on a to-do list. I visited studios, networked, sent out resume after resume and letter after letter, and got nothing but an occasional apologetic rejection or a nice coffee meet-up with some useful advice but ultimately no offer of employment.
Eventually, my savings dwindled, I took a job in customer service to pay the bills, and my self-confidence took a nose dive. After a few years of spinning my wheels and giving everything I had to the pursuit of that dream job in California, I was broke, burned out, and had nothing but some seriously worsened mental illnesses and some new personal debts to show for it. So, I packed what I could in my car and headed back home to Texas. I will admit, it was a difficult time for me. It never feels good to have to turn in the towel, wave the white flag, or admit to yourself that your ambitious dreams were maybe not the right path for you after all.
However, it was also restful, even serene. After years of stress, I had time to pause, decompress, spend time with family, and reflect. It was then that I found myself sitting in a parking lot during a rather warm and scenic winter afternoon when I heard a familiar screeching call that filled me with an instant rush of nostalgia and a long-lost sensation I can only describe as homecoming. I turned my head and saw a grackle sitting boldly on top of a car that almost certainly did not belong to him, peering across his concrete domain with a shrewd pale eye and a stern expression.
Much like this grackle, I was stuck in an environment that wasn’t made with me in mind. As a queer person growing up in rural Texas, it took a long time for me to come to terms with my identity and even longer to gain the confidence to be myself regardless of social pressures from others around me. Even still, I feel a deep fondness for the place I grew up. Like the grackle, I was born and raised here, even if not everyone wanted me around. Now back at home, I was faced with a choice. I could either roll over, become a lump, wallow in my sense of failure, or I could take a page from the grackle and choose to keep thriving despite, or perhaps in spite of my circumstances.
Grackles reminded me not only to embrace parts of my roots that I had previously been severed from but also became a symbol of perseverance, self-confidence, craftiness, and survival. All valuable virtues for someone starting over, and all the more fitting that I ended up in Austin, where the city’s famous slogan “keep Austin weird” means that the majority of people embrace the often unloved, including the grackle, and with any luck, myself.
