Opinion: Euthanizing the Capitol Hill fox was the kindest choice

Rabies can be successfully treated with immunoglobulin and vaccination, but the treatment should start as soon as possible. The people who were bitten should clearly understand that they are in mortal danger.

Jonathan Rosenthal, Clifton

Understandably, especially in an area that has robbed wildlife of places to den, nest and burrow, people are upset that a vixen mother with kits has been killed for attacking people. Encroachment and the lack of anywhere to call home, any space to roam, and any chance to be whatever nature intended them to be are usually the problem.

In this case, rabies reared its ugly head. Calls to save the fox were in vain, but not because people didn’t sympathize or empathize. Though a domestic dog can be quarantined for 10 days and released on Day 11 with an “all clear,” the incubation period for rabies in foxes and other wildlife species is unclear. Keeping a mother vixen in confinement for a recommended six to 12 months would be hell on her, and the people who were bitten would still have to undergo rabies shots.

Sad as it may be, euthanasia was the kindest thing. I hope that we will ponder how impossible we have made life for foxes and other animals — and give them a wide berth on walking trails, pressing on rather than stopping and worrying them with our picture-taking, pointing and staring, and not criticize those whose job it was to take her life. Years ago, I would have been the one called upon to euthanize her, as chief of zoonotic disease control for the D.C. Commission on Public Health.

Ingrid Newkirk, Washington

The writer is president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.