This is a satirical article and is not meant to be taken seriously. It does not reflect the opinions of The Spectator or UW-Eau Claire.

Along with the changing leaves and first glimmers of frost on the windows, the annual fall flu is beginning to make its way across campus signifies the beginning of autumn.

Ingrid Concocted, doctor at Student Health Service, said she’s used to an influx of flu patients as the weather gets colder, but this year they’ve been pouring in at triple the usual rate.

“Fall always brings in more kids. It’s those darn house parties,” Concocted said. “This is different though. There are so many more sick kids, and the symptoms are much worse than usual.”

Concocted said this year’s fall flu appears to be highly contagious. A student will come in with symptoms, and the next day, every one of their friends is in the line stemming from SHS and winding around the building and down the block to Horan Hall.

“The cases are growing exponentially,” Concocted said. “I’ve never seen anything like it with my own two eyes. You could compare the growth rate to the plague.”

The staff of SHS have spoken and are beginning to take COVID-19-level precautions, according to Concocted. When the cases first started coming in at a higher-than-usual rate, doctors began wearing I-95 masks and gloves, but they decided to begin dressing in full Hazmat suits.

“Nothing about this flu seems right to me. At first, I thought it was sending students into shock when I noticed a similar blue-colored tint on patients’ skins, but nothing else lines up with that theory,” Concocted said. “We at SHS are taking the highest precautions, and we’ve decided to send this case on to the experts.”

Alan Makebelieve, avian expert, said he was caught by surprise when his phone rang early on Friday morning. His friend Ella Artificial, a researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, had a case she needed help with.

“She called me up right as the clock hit five,” Makebelieve said. “Ella told me UW-Eau Claire reached out to her about a nasty case of the flu spreading around campus, but she had suspicions it was more than the average flu.”

Makebelieve said Artificial suspected the blue tint to students’ skins wasn’t shock or anything of the sort, but spread from UW-Eau Claire’s very own mascot, Blu.

“I dove into this case immediately. I’ve studied bird flu extensively, but it rarely transmits to humans,” Makebelieve said. “Blu, though, isn’t quite a bird or a human. Blu is some sort of humanoid-bird mutation, which would explain the ease of cross-species transmission.”

Just this morning, Makebelieve said Artificial called with more evidence to support her hypothesis. A student reportedly went to SHS complaining of a strong itch on his tailbone, and low and behold, it appeared as if he was beginning to sprout feathers.

Makebelieve said he reached out to Chancellor James Schmidt as soon as he was given this report, and Schmidt promised to send Blu in for testing immediately, but when he went to track down the mascot, Blu was nowhere to be found.

“I’m in the business of research, not mystery,” Makebelieve said. “But this is some next-level stuff.”

The Eau Claire Police Department has been contacted, according to Makebelieve, but no progress has been made. City police are currently considering contacting law enforcement at the federal level.

“If we don’t find the cause of this flu and slow the cases down, it could be detrimental to not only Eau Claire, but the entirety of the continent, or even the world,” Makebelieve said. “Blu is on the run, and we need to find that avian fugitive.”

Price can be reached at [email protected].