@darbyfrey I'll still need an initialized statsd object, otherwise any call to Napa::Stats.emitter throughout the application will return a invalid method for nil class error.  

So how do you feel about instantiating a default statsd object if ENV vars are not specified? (defaults to localhost, port 8125 if args are nill - statsd gem can fire off stats without throwing an error even if nothing is there listening). 

This way in production we can log the error / send it to honeybadger if statsd is not configured, but any calls to the emitter will still "work" without raising an error.