How Will You Commemorate the Death of Mr. Teeth, the Tupac-Loving Caiman?

 Here"s a suggestion. Instead of writing some slightly humorous, and altogether toothless, article about the caiman you could exercise your journalistic talents and write about two mysteries which other media outlets have also failed to note, much less investigate. Firstly, you might read stories about the incident in other local papers which would have mentioned that Mr. Teeth was a dwarf caiman and not an alligator as was initially reported. The only reason this was ever a story to begin with was because Alameda County Sheriff's Sergeant JD Nelson claimed the caiman served a role as a guardian of the marijuana stash. This fantasy, while insuring national media coverage, was unlikely as the 1.5m caiman was confined to a plexiglass tank. If the caiman was really a danger, you can bet the police would have shot it on the spot while raiding the house. Yet no one in the media ever followed up with questions about how realistic the role of deadly guardian was. An exotic beast guarding a size-able marijuana stash was too good a story to mess with. 

The second mystery is why the caiman, after living for 16 years as the pet of the stash owner, died shortly after being delivered to the Oakland Zoo.  I can easily believe that the caiman was unhealthy as many exotic pets do not get proper living space or care from their obsessed, but all too naive, owners. However, the fact that the caiman died within a day after "being rescued" is a lot of coincidence to stomach. Did the transfer from the house to the zoo stress an, already sick, caiman too much? Was the caiman euthanized by the Oakland Zoo? Does the zoo receive many other exotic pets? Euthanizing may well have been justified. I am not looking to blame Oakland Zoo personnel, but the handling of unwanted or mismanaged exotic pets is, itself, a story well worth writing about.