LEWISTON — There are three things you should know about the city’s new animal control officer, Chris Sanders.

He grew up on a farm and both loves and knows how to handle animals.

He’s from a police family, so he fits right in at the Lewiston Police Department.

He dabbles with the paranormal on the side, so if a ghost dog starts running wild in Lewiston any time soon, we’ll know who to call.

Sanders, 38, was previously an animal control officer and volunteer firefighter in Gray. He came to Lewiston two weeks ago and he’s been busy since.

Last week, he was called out to assist with a rescue of a cat that was stuck on a roof on Bates Street.

He was also sent to round up 15 cats from a house, and an abused dog had to be retrieved from another home and taken to get the help it needed.

Sanders handled it all with aplomb.

“I love animals,” he said this week. “I grew up on a farm and always had dogs, cats, cows. . . . All kinds of animals. I never really saw myself as an animal control officer, but here we are and I’m loving it.”

In Gray, Sanders mainly fought fires, but the town also had frequent animal complaints and no one to handle them. Sanders was offered the job simply because he’s good with both animals and people.

He took to the job right away, Sanders said. And when he learned that Lewiston was looking for their next ACO, he threw his hat in and got the job.

Sanders grew up in Maine, but spent part of his childhood in Louisiana, where his parents were police officers in New Orleans.

“Basically law enforcement, helping others, is in my blood,” Sanders said.

And then there’s the paranormal. It’s not part of his gig, but the matter of ghosts, unexplained phenomena and things that go bump in the night is just something that Sanders has always had an interest in.

“I just love anything with a good mystery,” Sanders said.

Sanders is so knowledgeable about matters of the paranormal that he’s been invited to appear on television, including on the Travel Channel, HBO and Hulu.

He doesn’t expect his duties as animal control officer to ever commingle with his interest in haunts. But if that should ever happen, he’d be perfectly OK with it.

If he could just find a dog trained to sniff out ghosts . . .

Meanwhile, as Sanders settles into his new beat, he knows that he’s filling the shoes of a predecessor who had worked with the animals of Lewiston for so long, he had reached almost legendary status.

Wendell Strout, who had been Lewiston’s animal control officer for nearly 30 years, died suddenly in November. The death of the colorful ACO stunned the community and left Lewiston without anyone to manage critters for a time.

“A lot of the people I’ve met so far have a lot of good stuff to say about Wendell,” Sanders said. “I’ve heard a lot about the legacy he left and I’m trying to meet the expectations of that.”

Sanders can be contacted — for animal complaints, not ghost problems — at the Lewiston Police Department at 207-513-3001. He can be reached via email at [email protected]