Three siblings, a pilot, university professor, and marijuana grow-operator, come together every Christmas. As always, their elderly parents present to them their thoughts in a recorded message. But this year's missive causes Frederick, Maria and Marcus to flinch, intense sentiments resurface. But before they can react, they are distracted by the sudden disappearance of the family's talkative parrot, Pock. Who has stolen him? Fingers are pointed, Gypsies are blamed. As the diversion subsides, their thoughts shift back to the recordings. The Pilot and the Parrot is a story about the power of the message, and messenger, to impact on the emotions of recipients. Marvel at Maria's theory of how mirrors come to reflect an envoy's stingers ever after. Is that why Marcus is such a loser?In this fiction-based-on-fact account, the settings shift from a traditional home overseas to the sleepy confines of the old coal mining town of Cumberland on Vancouver Island, into the competitive bustle of the lower mainland, then back to the cultural nexus of modern Europe. In each locale, the siblings face dramatic challenges. Their reactions to each are as unique as their individual character traits. In the year and some it all unfolds, their family life is marked by crime, scandals, romance, and a death-defying drama, will the Foerster family survive? This scribe's endings are never predictable...