A swarm of flesh-eating fruit flies skeletonized a student the Monday after spring break, putting the campus police on high alert and bringing classes in the Bunnell Building to a standstill.

The gruesome death took place in the Bunnell Building at around 8 a.m. according to Jayne D'Oh, a biology student. She witnessed first-hand how the victim, who has not yet been identified, was consumed by the insects in less than a minute.

The flies flew out of the biology prep room on the fourth floor as the student was opening the door, according to D'Oh.

"It was like a black cloud," she said. "There was a loud buzzing noise and he just disappeared in the cloud of flies."

D'Oh couldn't see what was happening but she heard the student screaming and started running in the other direction.

"I only looked back once," she said. "There was just a skeleton and blood, and then those bugs flying toward me."

D'Oh ran out of the building and called the campus police.

The police officers who responded to the call thought it was a prank. They were soon forced to revise that opinion.

"We heard them first," said Lt. I.P. Freely. "There's a window in the door at the top of the stairs and we could see a bunch of black dots moving behind it."

The droplets of blood on the window convinced the police to be cautious. The officers cordoned off the fourth floor with police tape and evacuated the building.

They then advised the Biology Department to call an exterminator.

A graduate student, who prefers to remain anonymous for fear of reprimand, believes he knows what happened. He said the prep room on the fourth floor is where biology students from many different classes keep their semester-long fruit fly experiments.

"I knew of some extreme mutation experiments that were taking place, but I thought they were harmless," he said. "I didn't think anything bad would come from it."

Before the break a lot of students were making the last push on a lot of their term projects.

One of the projects was huge, more than 100 vials of fruit flies, each vial holding hundreds of flies, according to the graduate student.

D'Oh is taking an evolution class. She said she was on her way to check on her fruit fly project that Monday morning. If the other student hadn't opened the door first she may have been the one to die under this bizarre set of circumstances.

"I just keep thinking about how that could have been me. If I hadn't slept for an extra half-hour that morning it would have," she said with a shudder.

D'Oh is certain the mutant flies were not from her project, but she's not certain what project they're from. Until the flies are cleared from the building there is no way to find out.

At press time, no Fairbanks exterminator had agreed to deal with the flies.