Institution or low-budget nature documentary? If you’ve ever been to the Concordia University of Edmonton campus, you’ve probably asked yourself something along these lines. Our campus isn’t just home to students, faculty, and the occasional stressed-out custodian. It’s also home to the maple box beetle: the six-legged empire that has taken root in every corner of our beloved institution. Like all great legends, the story of how this began has been passed down through whispers, group chats, science faculty, and first-year orientation horror stories. And the rumours all point back to one place… a biology lab, somewhere in the ground levels of CUE. Yes, ground zero was a biology lab, tucked behind microscopes, half-finished lab reports, and that faint smell of agar no one can ever quite explain.
This is how the story goes: Years ago, a team of talented biology students were running experiments using the famous maple box beetle. These students were your typical university students, intelligent, focused, and severely sleep-deprived. Meanwhile, these beetles, non-ordinary by nature, are curious, determined, and apparently very bad at respecting institutional boundaries; they planned and plotted their rise to power. All it took was one moment — one slightly open container, one distracted lab technician, one overly tired student, and one beetle jailbreak — and the rest became CUE-story.
Mind you, this wasn’t just one escapee, but a small platoon of beetles marched straight out of the lab, slipped past a biology student, and immediately began scouting the hallways for new terrain. Within days, students reported “crawling distractions” during exams, and “startup clusters” near boardrooms. And the Biology department? Silent. As in: “We can neither confirm nor deny that our experimental subjects are now your classmates.”
One brave staff member allegedly attempted to track the infestation back to its source, only to end up with locked lab doors, contradictory witness statements, and a suspiciously large number of beetles lounging near heating vents, as if they are on vacation.
Every September, the semester begins peacefully. The sun is out, the air is crisp, and returning and new students walk around blissfully unaware of what is to come. For a brief moment, it almost feels like a regular university.
But veteran students know the truth: the silence is a trap.
Just like clockwork, within a few weeks, the uprising begins. At first, it is subtle: one beetle on a windowsill, another clinging to a door frame, then a small cluster on the outside of Hole Academic Center. People shrug it off, and then suddenly the invasion hits full force, with gatherings held on floors, tables, chairs, and sinks. Scurrying around in labs, hallways, classrooms, and disturbingly, even in toilets. No location is too sacred. No surface is off limits. If there is space, there is a beetle.
Over time, the beetles have become part of the campus’s identity. They’ve survived renovations, winter storms, budget cuts, and student elections. Some universities have geese. Some have raccoons. We have maple box beetles, thousands of them, each carrying the legacy of that fateful day in the Biology lab. And every fall, when the semester begins quietly, we wait. We brace ourselves. Because we know the beetles are coming.
