Bill Haast was the owner and operator, from 1947 until 1984, of the Miami Serpentarium, a tourist attraction south of Miami, Florida, where he entertained customers by performing live venom extraction from snakes.
22 Facts About Bill Haast
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Bill Haast physically extracted venom from venomous snakes by holding them by the head and forcing them to bite a rubber membrane covering a vial.
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Bill Haast became interested in snakes while at a Boy Scout summer camp when he was 11 years old.
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Bill Haast was bitten for the first time at summer camp a year later, when he tried to capture a small timber rattlesnake.
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Bill Haast applied the standard snake-bite treatment of the time and then walked four miles to the camp's first aid tent, by which time his arm was swollen.
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Bill Haast was rushed to see a doctor, but quickly recovered without further treatment.
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Bill Haast was carrying a snake-bite kit, and had a friend inject him with antivenom; the bite hospitalized him for a week.
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Bill Haast started collecting snakes and, after initial opposition from his mother, was allowed to keep them at home.
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Bill Haast soon learned how to handle the snakes and found one timber rattler so easy to handle that he posed for a photograph with the snake lying across his lap.
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Bill Haast started extracting venom from his snakes when he was 15 years old, and dropped out of school when he was 16 years old.
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Bill Haast eventually returned home, where his mother had leased a concession stand at a lakeside resort.
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The couple moved back to New Jersey, where Bill Haast studied aviation mechanics, and was certified after four years.
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In 1946 Bill Haast decided he had enough money saved to start his snake farm.
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Bill Haast bought a plot of land facing US 1, south of Miami, then sold his house and started construction on the Serpentarium.
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Bill Haast extracted venom 70 to 100 times a day from some 60 species of venomous snakes, usually in front of an audience of paying customers.
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In 1954 Bill Haast was bitten by a common, or blue, krait.
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Bill Haast received his first cobra bite less than a year after he started his immunization program.
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Many times Bill Haast donated his blood to be used in treating snake-bite victims when a suitable anti-venom was not available.
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Bill Haast shot the crocodile, which weighed 1,800 pounds, nine times with a Luger pistol, yet it was still an hour before it died.
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Bill Haast closed the Serpentarium in 1984, and moved to Utah for a few years.
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Bill Haast's hands suffered venom-caused tissue damage, culminating in the loss of a finger following a bite from a Malayan pit viper in 2003.
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Bill Haast turned 100 in December 2010 and died on June 15,2011.