“Watchgator” Guards Million-Dollar Pot Stash

Meet Wally, who until a little while ago was the goon in charge of keeping watch over more than two thousand marijuana plants worth $1.5 million in Hemet, California, a small town southeast of Los Angeles. But “goon” isn’t really the right word, since Wally is a 55-pound, 4-foot alligator who was living in a cement pond, just doing his job, which was to discourage curiosity about the major growing operation taking place in a home in Riverside County. The Riverside Press-Enterprise reported that the homeowner was booked for cultivation and released on $100,000 bond. The healthy American alligator was surrendered to the Forever Wild Exotic Animal Sanctuary. Owning alligators, we should note, is illegal in California.