Ecclesiastes 3:2

Yesterday my friend called me up asking that I come pick him up from his ride. I assumed something was wrong. My friend is an avid bicyclist. He was in the Camp San Luis Obispo Road Race last week. So I know, for him to wimp out on a ride is not likely.

When I get there at the edge of town to pick him up I see the reason. A woodpecker had been hit by a car and was laying beside the road.

It looked bad. I had taken care of animals in this type of predicament often. I grew up with three sisters who all loved animals and thought they wanted to be the doctor for all the critters in the world. Mice, dogs, cats, raccoons, deer, gophers, crabs and birds have all been in my house for some kind of help. I was always the one to take care of the mess afterward. So when my friend asked me to help I just said step on it's head and put it out of it's misery. Done deal, right? He had other ideas.
After we get a blanket out of my suv, load up his bike and get back to his house I can hear a crackling sound when the poor critter breathes. It doesn't look good. I remember from a phone call to animal control for an owl I tried to rescue a year ago, that you should put them in a box and close it lightly wait 'til morning and check it again. The idea, they told me was that the animal is so traumatized by seeing you, he/she could die from fear. So, we put it in a box and waited.
This morning he was dead.
The bothersome feeling in my chest made me wonder if we had done the right thing. Too much. Could we have done something else? Was it more humane to save it from a night of pain by killing it? I'm not a doctor, how can I say when an animal can be nursed back? or not? One of the thoughts we had last night was that a cat or owl would kill it if we left it. But, now we took that meal away from that animal and it could die. What's your thoughts?