The other aspect of rabid animals is that they MUST be put down for the protection of society.
The thing that really bugs me, MHG, is that I do believe I would have more compassion for a rabid animal.
The animal firstly has rabies which causes abnormally violent behavior and secondly does not have the ability to think quite the same way humans do. A predator in the wild may kill the offspring of another animal for food or territorial reasons, but that is not the same as what these demons did.
They thought about this, they threatened the mother’s baby to her, they had a chance to turn and walk away, but instead...
What makes this really hard for me to comprehend is that this is what humans do.
We try to separate ourselves from them by calling them rabid animals or demons or monsters, and certainly most of us are different from them in terms of conscience and morality, but we are of the same species, and I confess that this bothers me very deeply :(