Dead Parrot sketch of "Death in Paradise". A joke dated AD 400, recently translated from Greek, shows similarities to the Parrot sketch. It was written by Hierocles and Philagrius and was included in a compilation of 265 jokes titled "Philogelos: The Laugh Addict". In the Greek version, a man complains to a slave-merchant that his new slave has died. The slave-merchant replies, "When he was with me, he never did any such thing!" In Mark Twain's humorous short story "A Nevada Funeral", two characters use a series of euphemisms for death including 'kicked the bucket' and 'departed to that mysterious country from whose
Grey parrot Grey parrot The grey parrot ("Psittacus erithacus"), also known as the Congo grey parrot or African grey parrot, is an Old World parrot in the family Psittacidae. The Timneh parrot "(Psittacus timneh)" was earlier treated as conspecific but has since been split as a full species. The grey parrot is a medium-sized, predominantly grey, black-billed parrot. Their average weight is , with an average length of and an average wingspan of . It has darker grey over the head and both wings, while the head and body feathers have a slight white edge to them. The tail feathers are red.