The moment I pulled up to the scene of the shooting, I knew there would be a reptile involved. I’ve been a journalist a long time. A reporter develops instincts and those instincts screamed of serpents.

“Look out,” I told the first gumshoe I could find. “There may be a 3-foot water monitor behind that door you’re about to kick down.”

Serpents are everywhere.

Two days, one search warrant and several arrests later, my awesome powers of prediction were recognized. The lizard was hauled from the apartment and lord knows how many lives I saved that day. I should probably start working on that award speech.

But that didn’t happen.

When I got to the scene in New Auburn, I had no clues, no insights, no visions of a scaly-skinned creature with a darting tongue. All I had been told was that shots had been fired and I almost never believe it when someone tells me that.

“A report of gunfire just days after the Fourth of July?” I said wistfully to no one. “My bets are on firecrackers. Or possibly just someone snapping their fingers real loud.”

And so I wheeled in as close as I could get and waited for someone to convince me that real action was afoot. This usually happens quickly. One time, it happened by way of a 9-foot state trooper who rushed to my car to inform me that I had just parked my wife in the line of fire.

Twice, I’ve parked my wife in the line of fire. I’ve pretty much disregarded my chances for the Husband of the Year award.

What happens when a reporter rolls to a newborn crime scene always reminds me of that fable about the blind men and the elephant.

A handful of blind men stand pondering the individual parts of an elephant with their hands. Apart, they don’t understand what they have before them. Only when they get together to discuss their finds collectively do they grasp that they are groping an elephant. At which point, each blind man screams: “Holy crap! This is an elephant!” and runs bawling from the fable. Because seriously, an elephant is nothing to fondle.

It’s the same wherever a reporter goes. It could be a fire, a stabbing, a Pygmy-smuggling operation. There will be a scattering of onlookers and each will know a little bit of the truth. Speak with enough of them and each will provide another misshapen piece of the bigger puzzle.

The trick is to cast away those random pieces of other puzzles entirely, which come from the occasional weirdo on the street whose only job is to trick reporters. (“I saw men in scuba tanks rise from the sewers and then drive away on a sleigh pulled by reindeer!”)

In Auburn last week, one woman told me she had seen two men with a gun and that one of the men looked like Carrot Top, of comedic fame.

A man standing on a curb near the action said he had no idea who lived inside the apartment but there had been a lot of people coming and going at all hours.

With that, even a television reporter could have deduced a drug angle and an associated home-invasion-style eruption. The Carrot Top tip worked itself out as soon as the first suspect was arrested and there it was, an elephant even blind men could see.

Only no one mentioned reptiles and so I never got that rich component into the story until the second day. And it’s a pity because lizards add so much to any tale, no matter how dull. I think they should release snakes before every school committee meeting just to add excitement and wake people up.

My reptilian ramblings are not without a component of second sight, however. The very day I started thinking about it, a two-and-a-half foot python slithered up to a home in downtown Lewiston. A day later, an alert citizen sent me photos and reported that the python was actually a milk snake, the variety said to be terrorizing citizens and freaking out emergency responders everywhere they turn. (“My milk snake brings all the boys from the yard …”)

Which validates me somewhat because it verifies what was foretold in the above-stated prophecy.

Serpents are everywhere.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter. You can e-mail him at [email protected].