Meche tried to remember if she'd ever heard of any movies about birds or rats. Wasn't there an old horror film about birds that pecked people to death or something like that? Somehow that didn't seem like the kind of thing Remy had in mind.

"I wouldn't mind seeing a movie about birds or rats either," she agreed with the Scarecrow. "Rats especially can probably go all kinds of places without being noticed. I bet they'd have some pretty interesting stories to tell if they could talk."

She realized a little late what a turn for the surreal this conversation was taking. It sounded like small talk, but she just felt that there was a lot going on here under the surface that she was missing, between the Scarecrow's almost worried reactions an unusual dislike for crows (was he a gardener?) and Remy's equally unusual interest in animals (it struck her as strange that someone who worked in a famous restaurant in Paris would be such a big fan of rats; she'd expect someone like that to be disgusted by an animal that most people thought of as unclean). But she couldn't figure out what it might be that was driving either of their responses, so she just kept writing letters and sneaking in the occasional bite of food in between keeping up her end of the conversation.