Hercules Parrot

Hercules Parrot (pronounced Parrow) was a proposed Sesame Street character in the early 1990s, an avian send up of Agatha Christie's famous fictional detective Hercule Poirot. His detective adventures were intended to be part of the "Mysterious Theater" series (spoofing Mystery!, which is where the Poirot TV series made its US debut). He is described as "a very dramatic parrot" with "a gray Homburg and little pencil mustache." He speaks with an exaggerated French accent (which causes his clients to misunderstand him) and accepts payment in crackers. Like Poirot, he is very fussy about the pronunciation of his name. However, his exaggerated accent, mispronouncing vowels, comes not from Poirot, but from Inspector Jacques Clouseau (including pronouncing room as "rhume," or pronouncing butler as "bewtler").
The first piece scripted for the character was written for Season 22, "Who Killed Cock Robin?" (a take-off of the nursery rhyme). He arrives at a study, where three birds mourn the loss of Cock Robin, only for Hercules to point out they have mistaken a photograph on the wall for the real Cock Robin, who is merely behind a curtain having a snack.
A second piece was attempted years later for Season 25, entitled "Who Stole the Chicago Ten?" Here, Hercules is joined by his associate Hastings, a mynah bird who repeats things. The pair visit the home of number collector Lord Magpie, whose work of art depicting the number 10 has gone missing. Hercules solves the case and finds the butler Reeves has had the 10 in his hat the whole time (meaning, living up to the whodunit cliche, the butler did it).
==Sources==
*Tony Geiss Papers at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University
__NOWYSIWYG__
Category:Unfinished Characters