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
Pirate Parrot kept the Parrot, although Koch himself was fired. Pirate Parrot The Pirate Parrot is a costumed mascot of the Pittsburgh Pirates of Major League Baseball. He was introduced in 1979 in response to the popularity of the Phillie Phanatic introduced one year earlier, as the Pirates and Philadelphia Phillies had a fierce intrastate rivalry at the time. The character of a parrot was derived from the classic story "Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson, most notably the one owned by Long John Silver named "Captain Flint". The Parrot debuted on April Fools' Day, 1979 when he "hatched" at Three Rivers