LISBON – Like an expectant father, Michael S. Jordan stared at a small, black cocoon firmly hanging from a tiny web of silk early Friday afternoon at his parents’ house on Farwell Street.

Jordan, 39, who stands 4 inches shy of 7 feet, was on his hands and knees on the front lawn behind a tall hedge and fence. He peered up at a Monarch pupa, or chrysalis, attached to the bottom of a wood-siding shingle painted red.

“Gee, I hope nothing got in there and got him. He should be hatching today,” Jordan said, sounding both worried and perplexed that the chrysalis wasn’t yet transparent, revealing the regal insect inside.

Beside the comic-book artist and carpenter stood stalks of 3-feet-tall milkweed plants, utterly stripped of foliage in the past two weeks by 40 pre-pupa, black-and-yellow-striped caterpillars, or larvae.

Jordan, a Monarch buff since he was 5 or 6, said when the Monarch eggs hatched and nearly four dozen tiny larvae emerged, his life got crazy.

“They just kept coming and coming in waves. The 40 of them depleted those milkweed leaves within a week or so. They’re just an eating and pooping machine,” said the Brunswick man, who visits his parents daily.

Worries about dwindling Monarch populations and the sight one day of six caterpillars struggling through grass and brush to reach neighbor Vernon Foxe’s spared milkweed plants 200 feet away drove Jordan to attempt a rescue.

“They’re very close to being on the endangered list. Since 1980, their population has been going down and down. People just aren’t putting milkweeds in,” or leaving growing ones alone, he said.

Thus began his impromptu Lisbon Monarch movement.

It caught Foxe by surprise, he said early Friday evening, but he was glad to help when Jordan showed him the caterpillars.

“I’ve seen more Monarch butterflies this year than in the past, so, I thought something was going on, but I didn’t know about Mike,” Foxe said.

Foxe knew little about Monarchs, other than their propensity toward milkweed. That’s why he didn’t mow them down, hoping to attract the colorful butterflies.

“They’re kind of neat to watch. I’ve got one chrysalis hanging,” he said proudly of a bright green cocoon on the underside of one of his milkweed plants.

For the past two weeks, Jordan said he’s been transferring five to six caterpillars at a time from his parents denuded milkweed to Foxes’s milkweed.

“I never had to do that before. This was just ridiculous. Every day I went out to see them, one plant would be stripped, and the caterpillars would be on the ground,” he added.

Both Jordan, his dad Albert, and Foxe said they believe increased development has depleted Monarch habitat – milkweed for the eggs and caterpillars, and nectar-bearing flowers for the adults. Hence, the need for way stations consisting of the resources.

Foxe thinks his milkweed came from the formerly vacant overgrown lot across the street, which was cleared a few years back for Lisbon’s new town office building.

“Before the new town office was built, that field was full of milkweed, and we used to have tons of Monarchs,” Albert Jordan said Friday.

His son said it’s been about 20 years since he’s seen Monarch eggs on milkweed at his parents’ place.

“When I was a kid, we had Monarch butterflies all over the place. But now, I didn’t realize they were getting so scarce, and I didn’t realize that everybody else was not seeing them anymore,” Michael Jordan said.

Carefully letting a caterpillar crawl off his palm and onto one of Foxe’s milkweed leaves to join four others contentedly munching other leaves, he added, wistfully, “This year, they made up for it, but they may not be back for another 20 years.”

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