Minecraft is getting a change to protect real parrots

Minecraft is getting a small, but important change after an uproar on Reddit — and it might just save a few lives.

In Minecraft, you can tame parrots (and coax them to breed) by feeding them chocolate chip cookies. Intrepid Redditor 1jl pointed out that chocolate will kill parrots in real life, and pleaded with Mojang to change the game to reflect that:

I get that you want to give chocolate chip cookies a use in the game, but literally millions of kids will play this game and chocolate and pet parrots are common enough that this will cause a problem. There is no question about that. You can’t tell me some 6 year old is [not] going to play Minecraft and then try to feed their Mom’s 45 year old Macaw chocolate chips or a chocolate chip cookies.

To say this post blew up would be to undersell it. It’s only three days old and already the top post of all time on the subreddit, sitting at over 37k upvotes. To the benefit of parrots everywhere, Minecraft developer Mojang took notice and are working on a change.

According to Motherboard, Minecraft lead creative director Jens Bergenstein said the development team only used cookies because cookies have no other good use in the game. He also said it was a “subtle reference” to the Nirvana song “Polly,” though it must be so subtle even Kurt Cobain wouldn’t catch it — “Polly” is about a kidnapping victim and never once mentions cookies.

According to Bergenstein, Minecraft‘s parrots will have a new food sometime in the near future.