Before the filming crew from the History Channel arrived in Lewiston in 2006, Animal Control Officer Wendell Strout and I got together for a brief exchange of ideas.

“What are they going to want us to do?” Wendell asked.

“How the hell should I know?” I responded. “Do you think I’ve ever been on The History Channel before?”

Wendell thought about it.

“Maybe they’re just going to ask a bunch of questions.”

“I doubt it,” I said. “It’s a film crew coming. They’re all about visuals.”

The two of us stood there on the cold Park Street sidewalk and fretted about it. We were going to either be big Hollywood stars or we were going to look like a couple bonehead hicks chasing shadows around in the woods of Maine.

Now, by the time the History Channel signed Wendell and me up for their episode “Mutant Canines,” Strout and I were already old friends.

Oh, the adventures I’d gone on with Wendell. I remember the time he invited me to come along as he chased a massive hawk out of an old building on Lisbon Street.

“That thing won’t come at my eyes, will it?” I asked Wendell, as we climbed the narrow, dark stairs to the attic.

“It’s a hawk,” Wendell said. “Of course it will.”

He laughed in that raspy way he had and I don’t know even now if he was serious.

For the next hour, the wily animal control officer and I stumbled all over each other in that dark, fetid attic, chasing after a bird who was much too fond of pigeon meat to go peacefully.

“It’s coming right at me!” I screamed at least a half-dozen times during that ordeal.

“Well, hold still then,” Wendell would say, “so I can get it in the net.”

Fun times. Harrowing times. And I bring it up only because Wendell Strout died last week and I haven’t had the opportunity to say anything about it, personally.

That’s the pain of being a reporter, you know. Nobody ever asks for MY opinions on these things. I’m always stuck on the wrong side of the notebook, sharing the thoughts of others while keeping my own locked up tight.

But I have such weird, cool, strange and hilarious memories of Wendell Strout that keeping them to myself would border on the unhealthy.

The History Channel had signed us up for that “Mutant Canines” episode, you’ll recall, because a week or two earlier, I had reported on a strange, dead animal found at a roadside in Turner.

From the start of the weird saga of the so-called “Turner Beast” or the “Maine Mutant,” depending upon whom you asked about it, Wendell had been my go-to source.

“I’m pretty sure that’s just a dog,” Wendell had offered, as we poked at the dead thing’s head and viewed it from various angles.

But the rest of the world believed otherwise. For a time, news agencies from all over the world turned their eyes to Turner, Maine, after the discovery of this dead creature that didn’t look quite like an ordinary dog.

When the History Channel’s weird little film crew arrived, Wendell and I basically acted as their servants for the rest of the day. We traveled all over the land, Wendell and I, so the crew could get footage of us “investigating” the animal.

At one point, they wanted footage of us carrying buckets of meat into the woods as though we were baiting living incarnations of THE MONSTER.

“Should I carry the buckets or should you?” I asked Wendell.

“Well, I’m the professional here. How would it look if I was doing all the grunt work?”

I ended up hauling those buckets of decomposing flesh into the woods all day long and in doing so, earned a nickname from Wendell that I can’t print here.

We hung game cameras on trees. We stood at the edge of the Turner woods trying to look serious while the film crews did their thing.

At one point, Wendell and I were sitting side-by-side, all grim faced and answering questions about the beast.

I was about to weigh in with my VERY PROFESSIONAL THOUGHTS on the matter, when Wendell burst out laughing.

“What?” I demanded, annoyed. “You screwed up my train of thought!”

Wendell laughed some more. “You still smell like bucket bait.”

That made me bust a gut laughing which in turn made Wendell laugh even harder. And this went on for the rest of the interview.

Wendell would be in the middle of stern-faced commentary about the Maine Mutant when I’d erupt in laughter for no apparent reason. Then Wendell would break out into further hysterics and it got to the point where the History Channel guys looked like they were ready to cry.

“Come on fellas,” one would say, all overwrought and pleading. “If we can just stay serious, we can get this done.”

And so we’d start again and it would go pretty well until Wendell would call me “Bait Boy” or something under his breath and the hilarity would start all over again.

“We’re going to be big stars,” Wendell said when we were finally done filming for the day.

“Yep,” I agreed. “They’ll probably come after us to do shaving cream commercials next.”

God, that was a fun day. Every time I had reason to connect with Wendell it was fun. He was a guy who took things deadly seriously when things needed to be taken that way, but he was just a blast the rest of the time.

Often, knowing that I keep the hours of a bat, Wendell would call me around midnight to share his thoughts on something.

“Now, you didn’t get this from me,” he’d say, before passing along details of a particularly unpleasant case he was working on.

Animal abuse of any sort really bothered Wendell Strout. He’d work those cases with particular zeal and when the culprits didn’t get the justice he felt they deserved, sometimes he’d call just to vent.

He could get cranky, Wendell, but he was so jovial that even crankiness became part of his charm.

I’d call him out of the blue because one of my editors had heard third hand that fox rabies was spiraling out of control in the area.

“Come on, Bait Boy!” Wendell would sputter after hearing my question. “Wouldn’t I tell you if there was an outbreak of fox rabies? You watch too many movies.”

I’d hem and haw and blame the editors and we’d have a laugh over it. And then, because it had kind of become our thing, I’d hearken back to our glory days of History Channel fame.

“They calling you to do beer commercials yet?” I’d ask.

Wendell’s gravelly laughter. “Any day now,” he’d say. “I gotta get an agent.”

In 2016, when a woman abandoned her yellow Lab outside the shelter after closing time, Wendell called me just to vent.

He had been trying to capture the animal when it ran into traffic and was run over on Main Street three days after it was released into the winter cold.

It was a sad conclusion to an ugly affair. Wendell had been trying for the happy ending and when he didn’t get it, he was sad. Sad and angry at the lady who had so carelessly discarded the family pet.

It was one of those conversations with Wendell where I just listened. He didn’t have to tell me his comments were off the record. When he called over matters like that, I was his friend, not just some nosy reporter from the local paper.

The chance to work with someone affable like Wendell is a big reason why being a reporter doesn’t completely stink. I considered the man a friend, but at the same time, I wanted to put cameras on him 24 hours a day just because everywhere Wendell Strout went, adventure seemed to follow.

A few years ago, a stray cat stole Wendell’s Thanksgiving dinner and when he told me about it, my eyes lit up nice and bright.

“You’re not going to write about that, are you?” he asked.

I laughed. “What do you think.”

In 2016, when Strout inexplicably shaved his mustache, I wrote about that, too, because seeing Wendell Strout without the mustache was like spotting Batman without the mask and pointy ears.

He grumbled about the fact that I had actually written about something as trite and personal as his facial hair, but it wasn’t genuine grumbling. Wendell was a good sport, and I’m here to tell you, that’s not the case with everybody who works for the city.

So, like so many other people these days, I miss the guy, and when news of his death came along, I wished mightily that I could be on the other side of the notebook for once. As I asked others for their thoughts on Wendell’s passing, my own thoughts assembled themselves inside my head with no place to go.

I feel better, now that I’ve had my say, but Wendell is still gone and that’s a shame. It’s a shame for his family, for those of us who knew him well, and for all those cats, dogs, chickens, snakes and various critters who need help of some kind.

Someone else will take on the job of managing all the animals in Lewiston, sure enough. And yet Wendell Strout’s shoes are going to be very hard to fill, indeed.

When it comes to the personalities who star in this real-life production we’re all living in, there is no one quite like Wendell Strout and never will be again.