It's a bird! It's a plane!
Nope, it's a bird, and it was in a UF library.
University Police Department officer Daymon Kizzar was called on Jan. 10 to remove a small hawk found in the Smathers Library foyer that morning.
Kizzar held the hawk in a T-shirt and carried it outside, where he said it flew into a tree.
Marijka Willis, who works in the circulation department of Marston Science Library, was walking into Smathers Library to drop a breakfast sandwich off for her husband when she saw the bird sitting on a light fixture in the foyer.
She said she thought it was a statue at first.
When she approached, it flew up a story, and when she climbed the stairs to the second floor, it was sitting on a window ledge between the second and third floors.
Willis called UPD and got the attention of her husband, Mil, the Coordinator of Public Service and Special Collections at Smathers Library. Mil Willlis grabbed his spare T-shirt and brought it to the stairs.
Kizzar used the shirt to pick the hawk up and carry it outside.
"It was a very nice thing that the police officers did," Willis said.
The hawk didn't struggle when Kizzar picked it up, but he said it looked like it wanted to be released. He wasn't sure what kind of hawk the bird was, he said, but it was beautiful.
"It was just awe-inspiring to hold a bird like this," he said.
University Police Officer Jordan Craven looks on as Officer Daymon Kizzar holds a hawk that was removed from Smathers Library.
