I was walking on Elizabeth Street in one early evening. A plump, curious rat captured my attention. She was tottering along the shops with her almost broken left front leg. As she approached the display cabinets, she would push herself up against the wall to check out what human greediness is up to.

I followed her for around a hundred metres. She didn’t notice, of course, as I maintained a good distance. As we turned into the corner of Elizabeth Street and Market Street, more people noticed her. It could be my weird stare at the ground that drew people’s interest.

As this happened, she looked obviously distressed and started staggering even more unsteadily. She then made a terrible decision to run closer towards the pedestrian walkway. Everyone nearby started shuffling away at the moment of chaos. That people panicked induced more fear in her. She started gyrating.

Clearly, she had no survival instincts. Why would you choose to unhesitatingly wander around the busy city of Sydney while it’s still light?

Maybe she just wanted to do some browsing. She was just interested in the new Cartier watches and Tiffany bracelets. I understand. I’m also a girl.

It doesn’t surprise me that she was, in the few seconds of me contemplating whether rats understand aesthetics, run over by a car. Obviously she sprinted out to the busy road after running around aimlessly while people were trying to stay away from her. Man, she was just trying to be somewhere.

What was to my surprise, however, was how much shrieking there was from the people who witnessed her being run over. There were about ten of them. They all looked fixedly at the little girl. She was still alive after being run over the first time. Her two front legs were flailing in the air but her lower body was obviously squished. Then she managed to dodge the next few cars by staying between the wheels. The fifth car eventually destroyed her, leaving a mangled, bloody mass on the ground.

The ten witnesses patiently observed the process of her death. I genuinely thought no one would care about her. After all, rats are a regular occurrence in Sydney.

Does it exhilarate the ten witnesses that a potential threat of the city is gone? That was my first thought.

No, they looked startled to me. It was as if they had never seen a rat near David Jones, or one being run over. Was she not supposed to be there? Did curiosity kill the rat?

Would she have been perfectly fine but for the audience, starting with me, who scared the wits out of her and sent her running aimlessly?