Now if I can find out more about The Colonel? In the summer of 1972 I was bitten by a pygmy rattle snake in the middle of a subdivision in south Miami. While there, a gentleman drove in with a huge python he caught on his property and had in a wire basket. William Haast at his Miami Serpentarium in the 1950's. Florida snake expert Bill Haast has died. Get the latest updates in news, food, music and culture, and receive special offers direct to your inbox. May he live far past the hundreds. He was able to identify the type of snake that bit me by the bite marks. I remember in 3rd grade, back in 1960, one of my classmates dropped her purse into the crocodile pit. Access from your Country was disabled by the administrator. Bill was an outstanding dedicated man. CBS4 news partner The Miami Herald contributed material for this report), First published on June 18, 2011 / 3:12 PM. How did he get them through Customs? I'd rather go back in the ocean than back to the Serpentarium! Copyright 2023 by WPLG Local10.com - All rights reserved. I stood, many times, on the grass in the little circle just feet from the Cobra at milking time. Nya used to take us after hours to the Serpentariumm to watch her Dad and his workers feed the animals. .mw-parser-output .templatequote{overflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 40px}.mw-parser-output .templatequote .templatequotecite{line-height:1.5em;text-align:left;padding-left:1.6em;margin-top:0}, In those days there were no laws prohibiting it, but the crew members didn't appreciate it.[6]. We watched the show (I don't remember if the presenter was Mr. Haast), and afterwards, Scot was encouraged to touch several snakes. local news and culture. Haast routinely injected himself with venom to build up resistance to the ill effects of the inevitable bites. I'll never forget April Fools day there! I was about 9 yrs old, and always remembered the story vividly. Mr. Haast and a Miami doctor treated more than 6,000 people with a snake-venom serum that they and their patients contended was effective against multiple sclerosis and arthritis. Bill Haast (December 30, 1910 June 15, 2011[1]) was the owner and operator, from 1947 until 1984, of the Miami Serpentarium, a tourist attraction south of Miami, Florida, where he extracted venom from snakes in front of paying customers. Dr. Haast met my pediatrician at Baptist Hospital in Miami. "He'd put on a show just to supplement the research for the while," she said. He was shot in the upper torso, said Miami-Dade police Detective Angel Rodriguez. We will have to go and visit the place that a man built who was inspired by Mr. Haast. Sheppard gave injections to patients with MS. His clinic became famous and was featured on CBS's 60 Minutes. I gathered from what he said that it would not bother him in the least were this variety of snake removed from its separate classification and returned to the larger taxon from which someone had extracted it. I introduced myself and got my wife and kids to meet him too. I will enjoy looking over this site over time. (and I have literally been attacked by a shark, which resulted in 30 days in the hospital, and losing half a lung) My point? Luckily though, I see from visiting one of the links that there is an attraction to view snake milking in St. During this time Haast met and married his second wife, Clarita Matthews. I remember those two huge crocs, one Nile and one American. After his wife became pregnant, Haast lost his job when the speakeasy he was working at was raided by IRS agents. I well remember Bill Haast and his snake "milking" shows. I then got a "thank you". Make a one-time donation today for as little as $1. At the same time his work saved dozens of lives. A Venomous Price to Pay In recent years, snakebite victims have been billed hundreds of thousands of dollars for antivenom. A rare survivor, he declared himself doing "very well, anxious to get back to work.". My "fondest" memory: sitting on the side of the crock pit with my butt hanging over the edge, the wall wasn't but a couple feet tall, right? Besides his wife, he left two daughters, Naia Hanna and Shantih, living in California. After many years of being a Bill Haast fan, I was thrilled to be there. The boy's father and uncle jumped into the ?it and tried to pry open the crocodile's mouth. He introduced himself as Col. Spencer, I introduced myself as "I'm Mark and could my brother Dick come too?" All this may be imaginative conjecture of a teenage boy.. .Once thing sure, though, Him and his wife sure looked scary, to we boys, in those white Drs. The concrete & stucco cobra was the second icon of the Serpentarium. THAT WAS THE MOST MEMORIBLE PART OF THAT VACATION. 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. great childhood memories spent there with my family , i remember getting goose bumps when we would see the cobra statue. My mother took my brother and I to the serpentarium in 1977. I was a good friend with Bill Haast's grandson Willie, He and I would catch snakes and bring them to the Surpentarium, I also would go camping in the everglades with Willie and his sister pinkie and their mom and dad, we would swim in the water around gaters and catch snakes. I remember him extracting cobra venom too as that was part of a demonstration. I also remember hearing a story about him saving the lives of GI`s in Vietnam who had jumped from a helicopter into some poisonous snakes. Addressed to Guest: How dare you ever get on a site, and reproach a man for his dispair over the loss of an innocent 6 year old boy. He was bitten for the first time at summer camp a year later, when he tried to capture a small timber rattlesnake. Cloud. [2] After closing the Serpentarium, he opened the Miami Serpentarium Laboratories, a facility in Punta Gorda, Florida that produced snake venom for medical and research use. I first heard of Bill Haast around 1955, when reading a "man's magazine" (as they were called back then, probably Argosy. He's truly an amazing man who has lived a life of exemplary devotion to his work. Haast could not make the ceremony, so part of the ceremony came to him. We lived in Southern California. ''I miss the excitement of the Serpentarium,'' Haast said. In 1978, one of my first acts as a new husband on my honeymoon was to bring my new bride to the Serp (30 years later and she hasn't forgotten that one) so she could witness what I'd described so many times. Haast still grows somber when retelling the story: It was a Sunday. [4] As of 2008 he continued to have his wife inject him with small amounts of snake venom. The Miami Serpentarium, established in1946 as the first-of-it's kind premier and pioneering venom production laboratory in the world, was originated by the Founding Director, W. E. Venezuela made him an honorary citizen after he went deep into the jungle to give a boy a pint of blood. I'm sorry I can never take my grandchildren there. Today Dec26, 2008 I am looking at his picture some 45 years later and hooks the same. The boy's father and another man, Nicolas Caulineau, jumped into the pit and straddled the crocodile. By the mid-1960s he was putting on five shows a day, dressed in a white lab coat, extracting venom to sell for scientific experimentation. His hands are gnarled and deadened, some fingers hang immobile, some look stunted in growth, and a pinky and index finger have been amputated at the knuckle, photographs taken by his wife reveal. BILL PUT ON HIS MILKING SHOW WHEN A SNAKE IN BILL'S HAND WIGGLED AROUND AND SPRAYED A WHITE LIQUID FROM THE REAR OF THE SNAKE INTO THE CROWD AND ACROSS THIS WOMEN'S LEGS IN FRONT OF US. It was all in a days work for probably the best-known snake handler in the country, a scientist-cum-showman who made enough money from milking toxic goo from slithery serpents to buy a cherry-red Rolls-Royce convertible. Soon after opening the Serpentarium, Haast began experimenting with building up an acquired immunity to the venom of King, Indian and Cape cobras by injecting himself with gradually increasing quantities of venom he had extracted from his snakes, a practice called mithridatism. Name a deadly snake and Bill Haast has either tamed it or been bitten by it. Most of the family agreed it was better than any other stops we made, including the newly opened Disney World. Mr. Haast fished it out with a long pole after the big croc took a bite of it. What amemorable time, nobody was dissapointed and we all calmed down and talked quietly afterwaeds. The attackers included cobras, a krait, green mambas, a pygmy rattlesnake, a European asp and a palm viper. flashbackmiami.com/2013/11/26/serpentarium-2/, Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 15_4_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/15.4 Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1. Cruz called Haast after a man was bitten by a Black Mamba, one of the most poisonous snakes of Africa. The incident left Bill Haast badly shaken. I remember visiting the Serpentarium on a school field trip when I was in kindergarten, in 1971. Later that day, boy did he get back at the girl that had done this. Legend has it that the Timacuan indians who lived there before the European settlers arrived, revered these snakes as Gods. In 1982 when I was twelve I moved from England to Hollywood, Fl with my family. It was the story of Bill's adventure with the blue krait bite. boy killed by crocodile at miami serpentarium. Haast. The favor was returned in 1989 when, according to The Associated Press, the White House used secret connections to spirit a rare serum out of Iran to treat Mr. Haast as he fought to recover from a bite by a Pakistani pit viper. I don't remember how long he was but I DO remember how strong he was. ``Funny, the very place I wanted to get away from, I now miss. Is bitten by dozens of water moccasins and dies. His first king cobra bite was in 1962. Haast eventually sold his family home to buy the land on South Dixie Highway where the Serpentarium would rise. I'm surprised to hear the stories about the cobra being damaged enroute to SMSH. Regarding Bill Haast's killing of Cookie the crocodile, bothe Bill Guest and jesse are wrong. I am transferring my old pictures to new albums and came across our photos at The Serpentarium in 1973 when we were there with our family while on vacatin. I remember seeing an alligator gulping down whole chickens and being allowed to handle an Indigo snake after Mr. Haast's presentation. People were lining up for a show. It was an incredible place. They had the best house! Yep, I was a snake kid, read all the books in my library, found "Cobras In His Garden" and was as surprised as my parents when Bill Haast wrote back to me a few times. Is it the venom? 'There is no reason to visit Miami. I think that this Dr., was loved by thousands of Miamians, because of him lives are save. ", Twitter accolades came in from across the globe. A small alligator, maybe 5 foot with tail had gotten loose and was wandering. While he was extracting venom from a small cobra, he was struck on the thumb and calmly told his wife that he was going to lie down for awhile. As far as I recall, the Cobra on the roof was the one from the Serpentarium. "He's like an icon to people that know him," Cruz said. 38-year-old Francisco Oropeza was firing a rifle in his yard late at night when his neighbors asked him to stop, San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers said. I asked him one evening if I could walk with him he said yes in the baritone of gentle command. When he reached in to get it with his hook, he realized he had been had, then chose to play along and scare the audience who had already watched him take out a few deadly snakes from other boxes. We used to hunt non-poisonous snakes in the Glades, Homestead farmlands: king snakes, red ratsnakes, yellow ratsnakes, indigos, black racers, etc., and take them down to mr Haas and he had a yardstick on the table and would measure them by the foot, pay us maybe .25cents/foot for the ratsnake, .35/foot for the kingsnakes, etc. Linkedin. I read here about the boy who was killed after falling into the crocidile pit. Even though this article is of the Snakeman as we called him I want to comment a special person. sailing lessons beaufort, nc . On the 2nd trip, an entire day was planned for me there. He shot the 1800-pound crocodile nine times with a Luger pistol, yet it was still an hour before it died. It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. At first he believed his immunization to cobra venom would protect him from the krait venom, and continued with his regular activities for several hours. Copyright 2023 Local10.com is published by WPLG INC., a Berkshire Hathaway company. MIAMI - The name of the 15-year-old who was shot and killed in northwest Miami-Dade on Wednesday has been released. EARLY START The story of how Haast made his way to Florida has a certain Huck Finn appeal. He bought a plot of land facing U.S. 1, south of Miami, then sold his house and started construction on the Serpentarium. "And in the end the research could take care of itself.". But Haast no longer can handle the forked-tongued killers that made him famous. That gave him a chance to use his toolbox to smuggle snakes, including his first cobra. Not to mention, people do not operate properly during tragic events. I didn't know what to do with it, so I call the Miami Serpentarium. And modern medical researchers are proving him right snake venom fractions are becoming recognized as potent medicines. Lee Martines - Growing up in Miami in the 40s and 50s I would visit the Serpentarium every couple of years and always marveled at the variety of snakes and the process of extracting the venom from the poisonous ones. Thanks for jogging my memory. But none the less just because Mr. Hass felt bad about what happened he, Haas, shot the alligator for no reason. When he was 19 he joined a man who had a roadside snake exhibit, and went with him to Florida. He suffered 17 bites that nearly killed him, one put him in an iron lung for three days, his system paralyzed. In the late 40's and early 50's I lived in Marathon on the Keys. THRIVING BUSINESS Despite the medical debacles, the Serpentarium continued to flourish. When she got in the car she said she had a suprise for me. Senseing this the king made an immediate move toward the door to challenge. I also supplied 40 desert sidewinder rattlesnakes for Jim to exhibit in a large glass fronted cage filled with sea sand. independent local journalism in Miami. Haast remained director of Miami Serpentarium Laboratories near Punta Gorda until his death. Bill Haast died of natural causes Wednesday in Punta Gorda, on Florida's west coast, where he had made his home. Police could be seen going through the neighborhood, talking to witnesses and looking for any helpful surveillance video. ''I know some people have said that about Bill, but he is one of the hardest-working, most diligent, focused individuals you'll ever meet,'' said Van Horn, 62, who worked at the Serpentarium as a young man. The Reptile Centre in Northampton, England, declared him "an inspirational man within the world of reptiles." Bill Haast (December 30, 1910 - June 15, 2011) was the director of the Miami Serpentarium Laboratories, a facility near Miami, Florida that produces snake venom for medical and research use. I grew up living close to the Haast's in the 60's. Living In Ms. we had plenty of cotton mouths copperheads and assorted others. Noticing that it had come from Florida, he knew then, he said, that Florida was his destiny. And I still do as if it happened yesterday. He gathered 400 cobras and took his findings to a University of Miami researcher. The whole experience seemed to do the trick, as he never displayed such fear of snakes again after that. I have Ophidiophobia (not herpetophobia the fear of reptiles) a true fear of snakes. My Dad would take me there often, we lived in South Miami (as I do againlong story). Haast is still trying to prove a point: He'll go to his grave believing venom can heal. We ran it over, and with a little coaxing, I convinced the driver to return. But I must say he had a good sense of humor too. Voted for the photo and the biographical info. "I could become a poster boy for the benefits of venom,'' Mr. Haast boasted. Search underway for Texas gunman who killed 5 01:46. . He respected him very much. What a rush. I told my mother how I'd really like to get an Indigo and she kind of shrugged it off. hoan bridge deaths 2021 . And we often talked of many things when she came in to South Dixie Amoco to have the well-maintained car serviced. Unless otherwise noted under the right bottom of the photo, all images are copyrighted by Don Boyd, Bill Haast and the Miami Serpentarium - recent news articles, SW 128th Street and South Dixie Highway, Dade County, Memories of Old Hialeah, Old Miami and Old South Florida Photo Galleries - largest non-Facebook collection on the internet, Miami Area Tourist and Local ATTRACTIONS Historical Photos Gallery - All Years - click on image to view. He said his last snakebite, Number 173 suffered in 2003 -- courtesy of a Malaysian pit viper -- was the final blow to his hands, already mangled from years of enduring the nerve- and tissue-destroying poison that snakes spew when biting. Miami-Dade police are investigating after a 16-year-old boy was fatally shot late Tuesday night at an apartment complex. After closing up shop, Haast spent a few years in Utah before moving back to Punta Gorda and reopening his snake farm sans the showmanship. Unfortunately, in 1977 a six-year-old boy fell into the crocodile pit at Miami Serpentarium and was killed by "Cookie", a 12-ft-long crocodile. The experiments gave encouraging results, but were still in preliminary clinical trials when the Salk polio vaccine was released in 1955. He received the key to the city.Those same hands that for decades eased venom from the world's most poisonous snakes held the key to the city of Miami on Thursday. Bill was like a super hero to me as a kid. I grew up in Hialeah,snake hunting was one of the cool things we did back in the day.We'd ride our stingrays out to milam elementary w 16 ave and catch decays ,ring necks ,yellow rats ,red rats,garter snakes,blue racers.We'd ride are bikes accross the palmetto expressway and go into the woods behind the church caught an indigo there once ,it was laying accross a tree stump that was lucky back 1971.I was 12.It was 6ft long I feed it eggs ,raw chicken breast,a big toad once .It had bright red under the chin.Mr haast told me how to get the lice off it at his snake show.I called the serpentarium every so often to ask various questions on snakes.The guy on the phone was cool and calm he'd answer your questions politely it had to be Bill to us kids he was like superman.Saw his show 5 times.Man !that indigo Mrs haast had was really pretty ,my mom was talking about that snake at big family get together in wis. last new years.We sure are lucky we grew up their!
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