LEWISTON – Down on the Lewiston Public Library’s first floor Friday morning, little Frak had already eaten a piece of milkweed as big as his body.

“And he’s the smallest one, but I think he’s trying to catch up,” Circulation Services Supervisor Jane Weed said.

Weed and the rest of the library’s workers are keeping a close watch on Frak and his 15 brethren – a group of caterpillars being kept in three jars at the library.

Staff will monitor the black, white and yellow-striped caterpillars for the next few weeks as they grow, form cocoons and emerge with the familiar black-and-orange wings of a Monarch Butterfly.

The library’s monarchs will be labeled and set free some time in mid-September, part of a tracking program sponsored by the University of Kansas. Each will have small tracking labels affixed to one wing before they begin the 2,000-mile migration to central Mexico.

Deputy Director Ellen Gilliam said the program is a unique opportunity for library staff and patrons. She’s collected pamphlets, maps, books and old magazine articles about the butterflies and their journey for interested patrons. Much of it comes from MonarchWatch.org, the University of Kansas’ butterfly program.

The monarch’s migratory routes were first identified in the 1960s. Butterflies born west of the Rocky Mountains tend to migrate to Southern California. Those raised east of the Rockies migrate to a specific valley in central Mexico.

The KU study hopes to show the route the butterflies take and how things like climate and weather affect their trip. Each will carry a small tracking sticker on its wing, listing the MonarchWatch.org Web site, a toll free number and a registration number.

“They hope that if someone finds the individual butterfly along the way, they’ll let Monarch Watch know,” Gilliam said.

The college pays residents of Mexico to collect the butterflies, paying a $5 bounty for each registered butterfly they turn in.

“And there are literally millions of butterflies there, on the mountains, on the trees,” Gilliam said. “It looks like leaves covering the ground there.”

Stages

Right now, library staffers are just concerned with getting the larval monarchs through the caterpillar stage. They arrived Monday, and Gilliam said each was a few millimeters in length when they first emerged from their eggs.

They are divided into three glass containers kept on each of the library’s floors. Library staffers are also providing the food – milkweed leaves gathered from backyards and roadsides throughout the area. The leaves are the only food the caterpillars will eat.

“So it’s an interesting lesson, for everyone, in ecology,” Gilliam said. “The more we get rid of nuisance weeds like this, the more we do to our environment. The less milkweed we have, the fewer monarch butterflies we’ll see.”

Staffers have only named two individual caterpillars – including Frak on the first floor, who stood out because he was so much smaller than the others. On the second floor, staffers at the reference desk named the biggest caterpillar in the bunch for boxer Muhammed Ali.

“He’s the most aggressive of all of them,” Gilliam said. “He just pushes all the others aside.”

The caterpillars get fresh leaves every morning, eating more then their own weight in milkweed each day. And they’ve grown. Two of the caterpillars could fit on a dime as of Friday, but Gilliam said they’ll grow to two inches in length, eating two leaves of milkweed apiece each day, before they’re finished.

Gilliam expects them to be at full size sometime next week. Then they’ll climb up their chambers, attach themselves to the top and transform into hard cocoons. The adult butterflies should emerge 10 days later.