Bill Haast

Bill Haast (December 30, 1910 – June 15, 2011 ) 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.

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.

Haast extracted venom from venomous snakes from the time he was a boy.

Haast physically extracted venom from venomous snakes by holding them by the head and forcing them to bite a rubber membrane covering a vial.

Haast was born in Paterson, New Jersey, in 1910.

He became interested in snakes while at a Boy Scout summer camp when he was 11 years old.

He was bitten for the first time at summer camp a year later, when he tried to capture a small timber rattlesnake.

He applied the standard snake-bite treatment of the time (making crossed cuts over the fang marks and applying potassium permanganate) and then walked four miles to the camp's first aid tent, by which time his arm was swollen.

He was rushed to see a doctor, but quickly recovered without further treatment.

His next bite, later the same year, came from a four-foot copperhead.

He was carrying a snake-bite kit, and had a friend inject him with antivenom; the bite hospitalized him for a week.

Haast started collecting snakes and, after initial opposition from his mother, was allowed to keep them at home.

He 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.

He started extracting venom from his snakes when he was 15 years old, and dropped out of school when he was 16 years old.

When he was 19 he joined a man who had a roadside snake exhibit, and went with him to Florida.

While there, he ended up rooming with a moonshiner on the edge of the Everglades, and became proficient at capturing all kinds of snakes.

Haast eventually returned home, where his mother had leased a concession stand at a lakeside resort.

Haast added a snake exhibit to the business.

There he met and eloped with his first wife, Ann.

They moved to Florida so that Haast could pursue his dream of opening a "snake farm".

After his wife became pregnant, Haast lost his job when the speakeasy he was working at was raided by IRS agents.

The couple moved back to New Jersey, where Haast studied aviation mechanics, and was certified after four years.

With his certification, he moved to Miami to work for Pan American World Airways.

After the United States entered World War II, Haast served as a flight engineer on Pan Am airliners flying under contract to the United States Army Air Corps.

These flights took him to South America, Africa and India, where he bought snakes to bring back to America, including his first cobra.

"In those days there were no laws prohibiting it, but the crew members didn't appreciate it."

- Bill Haast

In 1946 Haast decided he had enough money saved to start his snake farm.

He bought a plot of land facing U.S. 1, south of Miami, then sold his house and started construction on the Serpentarium.

His wife Ann did not approve, and they eventually divorced.

Haast retained custody of their son, Bill Jr. and continued to work as a mechanic for Pan Am while he built the Serpentarium.

During this time Haast met and married his second wife, Clarita Matthews.

The Serpentarium opened at the end of 1947, still not completed.

For the first five years Bill, Clarita, and his son were the only staff.

Bill Jr. eventually left, having lost interest in snakes, but not before he had been bitten four times by venomous snakes.

By 1965 the Serpentarium housed more than 500 snakes in 400 cages and three pits in the courtyard.

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.

He would free the snakes on a table in front of him, then catch the snakes bare-handed, and force them to eject their venom into glass vials with a rubber membrane stretched across the top.

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.

As a result of handling these snakes, Haast had been bitten 172 times by mid-2008, all of which but the last few were validated by the Guinness Book of World Records "for surviving the most deadly snake bites", a distinction Haast disliked as he did not think being bitten was a goal to be attained or admired.