Pot growers employed "watchgator" to guard $1.5 million weed stash

While raiding a $1.5 million pot-growing operation, California narcotics investigators found an alligator named "Wally" guarding the stash. He is healthy, weighs 55 pounds, and is now being cared for by the Forever Wild Exotic Animal Sanctuary. Here's the original news item in the Riverside Press-Enterprise.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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Don

Apparently, guard gators are not effective against this threat model.
GreenJello

So I guess it’s normal to have a gator in California…. Or that they guess just didn’t get the whole “Don’t attract attention” bit of growing a illegal plant?!?!??!!
isen

those alligator eyes look suspiciously dilated, and did you see the smile on its face? yes. the alligator is high as a kite.
- facetedjewel
  
  …and he always has the munchies! Nom nom nom nom…’come here, Mr. Narc, why you bogarting that joint, my friend?!
millrick

bears?
gators?
what will those pot growers think of next?
Briar

I hope those parrots in the background are also getting bigger cages as the ones they are in are horribly teeny tiny for such intelligent creatures.

I’m guessing (or hoping!) that those are not permanent cages or they are let out often, but it still pains me to see parrots crammed in such small spaces.
Joseph Hertzlinger

A nuclear power plants has used the same tactic.
Eric Hunting

Who would be afraid of that? Just look at that face. He’s practically Krokodil Gena. You want to put people off, go with honey badgers. Or slow loris. Slow loris will F-you up, man!
Chrs

Every so often, I’m proud of my home county.
- Anonymous
  
  Proud that people are getting arrested and having their lives ruined over a plant that should be legal? Lame.
- Gilbert Wham
  
  I’m more surprised it wasn’t Florida. That’s pure undiluted Hiassen, right there.
wigg1es

Not the first alligator used to guard the ganja.

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2008/10/large_alligator_greets_cops_in.html
Anonymous

that ain’t a grow op – that’s a zoo!
Ubernostrom

Next year they were going to upgrade to an alligator infested moat for their operation. This was just a test run.
EMJ

Only slightly less sad than 26 bears doing the same:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2010/11/23/bc-pot-bears-charges.html

Doomed to habituation, now these bears are a nuisance rather than wild animals. Their future is bleak.