Parrot got started two years ago on April 1st as a well coordinated prank consisting of a press release, an interview, an book announcement.  The prank version of Parrot purported to be a new scripting language that combines the best features of Perl and Python scripting languages.

Sparked by the prank, an open source project with the same name was born to create a common virtual machine that efficiently execute bytecode for dynamic languages such as Perl and Python.  Next version of Perl, Perl 6 (may be down), will use Parrot VM.  There is at least one effort, called Pirate, to do the same for Python.  There were even attempts to convert Java bytecodes to Parrot bytecodes automatically.

Parrot: Some Assembly Required is probably the best introduction to Parrot.  Main website for Parrot project is at ParrotCode.org (slow) and development discussions take place on Perl 6 internals mailing list (subscribe, archive).  Other than Perl CVS and CVS snapshots, latest code drops can be found on CPAN source directory (version 0.0.11.2 seems to be the latest).

As the petshop owner said in the Monty Python Parrot sketch, this Parrot sure doesn't look dead to me.

Customer: This so called Parrot is DEAD.  DEAD, DEAD, DEAD!
Petshop owner: No it's not.  It's just resting.