I then got a "thank you". I knocked and went in. Source = Youtube. Parents Don Julio and Margini Fernndez Flores were so traumatized by their son's death, they plan to move to Nicaragua to try and protect their other young children, aged between three and 16. 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. We have tried to cover and visualize some, we have implemented a hook with a strip to see if it pulls something, but to no avail. I visited the Serpentarium in1969 as an 18-year-old on spring break with a buddy. In 1990 he moved to Punta Gorda, Florida, with his snakes, where he established the Miami Serpentarium Laboratories. Icon: Bill Haast. Thanks for putting it up! He said at that time if he lived to be 100 it would possibly prove that snake venom is anti aging. 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. On Tuesday, Sheriff Demings said the child was snatched while on holiday with his mother, father and two siblings. He was carrying a snake-bite kit, and had a friend inject him with antivenom; the bite hospitalized him for a week. 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. A rare survivor, he declared himself doing "very well, anxious to get back to work.". I stood, many times, on the grass in the little circle just feet from the Cobra at milking time. The show was great. As a young teenager in the mid 1960's I was very interested in all types of reptiles. 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. . "He's like an icon to people that know him," Cruz said. Haast routinely injected himself with venom to build up resistance to the ill effects of the inevitable bites. He bought a plot of land facing U.S. 1, south of Miami, then sold his house and started construction on the Serpentarium. The boy and another friend decided to go . There were others I recall, Monkey Jungle, Parrot Jungle, but none had the that eye catching element of suspense like The Serpentarium. THE body of the two-year-old boy, Lane Graves, snatched by an alligator at a Disney resort has now been recovered. In North Carolina, a chemist offered this salute: "Resssssssst in Peace Bill Haast.". It was intuitive. "He was a really nice man with a big heart," said his grand-niece Michelle Haast of Miami. On the 2nd trip, an entire day was planned for me there. I lived just across the road from Bill's place in 1959 thru 1961 and went. 12-foot crocodile . They moved to Florida so that Haast could pursue his dream of opening a "snake farm". Palm vipers. His wife Nancy and I had been pleasantly talking an she was so fearful that she held my arm and squeezed hard, all the while telling me that a bite from that king cobra would likely kill Bill , because up to that point he had been bitten some 23 times , but never by a king cobra one drop of which can kill 5 men. ''I know a lot of people in Miami still remember the Serpentarium and wonder what became of me, that's why I'm talking to you,'' said Haast, who would only be interviewed by telephone. My granddaddy was Robert Kundtz, horticulurist. .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]. the coolest thing i remember is the sighn bill had on the stage while he was milking his terrorfying snakes "there is nothing more exciting then watching danger from a safe distance". I was inspired by him because as kids we used to go all through the Evergaldes looking for snakes to catch. They all screamed, then everyone had a good laughed together! I got excited thinking it was a new toy. Oh my gosh..I worked on Bill and Nancy's house in P.G 15-20 years agomold issueshumidity problems..put an air exchanger in their snake area to control odorbut had strict guidelines to maintain high humidity. But I always felt I would live this long. Some questions, like the one a decade ago from Cruz, the venom unit founder, mean the difference between life and death. His take on the matter was generally to the effect that the placement of this variant of the common black racer into a separate subspecies status seemed dubious. But I remember leaning over the small wall to look closer at that croc when my feet slipped and I pitched forward towards the pit. Bill Haast's daughter was in my 4th grade class and we went to the Serpentarium for a field trip. 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. We entered the Serpentarium and a fellow (Haas) walked out of the back office to greet the tourists and said" he's dead" referring to John F. Kennedy, President of the USA. I read here about the boy who was killed after falling into the crocidile pit. In my Junior high days, I was a snake enthusiast. Haast still grows somber when retelling the story: It was a Sunday. Haast's death-defying act didn't disappoint. With his certification, he moved to Miami to work for Pan American World Airways. Several people on social media said the child was on the beach at the time watching a movie. When the show headed to Florida, Haast convinced his parents to let him go. Haast's second wife, Clarita, simply narrated, setting the mood for the audience. 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. Bill was sort of surprised but actually seemed happy to see me. I'm 5'2 from s city in north Jersey myself, and the snake was about my size! He later received commendations from President Gerald Ford and Miami Mayor Stephen Clark. Wow the good old days and funny thing is my name is Cookie!!! Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings confirmed that the toddlers body was found in the water about 3.30pm, local time, after more than 15 hours of searching the Seven Seas Lagoon in Orlando, Florida. I remember him extracting cobra venom too as that was part of a demonstration. flashbackmiami.com/2013/11/26/serpentarium-2/, Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; CPU OS 15_5 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) GSA/219.0.457350353 Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1. I still have his autograph and some great snapshots of that meet & greet. Even though this article is of the Snakeman as we called him I want to comment a special person. i would love to read a biography on bill haast or should we say DR.HAAST? 76. Also wonder if that huge Cobra statue is still on the property..and still scary as hell!!!!!!!!! I feel sorry for the young generations that they will never get to see the true mastery of Bill Haast with his serpents. During its heyday, it attracted about 50,000 Florida visitors a year. An estimated 1,000 people every year are killed in crocodile attacks, many more than by sharks. My brother was always over there buying, trading snakes. I grew up near the Serpentarium , and played baseball @ Suniland Park..Many times during games , an iguana that had escaped from the serpentarium , would run across the field..As kids , we too ,sold snakes to the facility , and we managed to see the show several times a yearwe would ride our bikes to Parrot Jungle and the Serpentarium and see all kinds of rare wild animals and snakes , and birds , then fish salt or fresh water within a few miles of homegreat place to grow up in the 60's. But his wife said that the crocodile, named Cookie, was killed and buried in the same pit where it. He said the body was found completely intact near the attack site, leading authorities to believe the alligator drowned the toddler. it stirred interest faster than the key lime pie and local jelly signs. Haast's mental trauma over the boy's death eventually led to the closure of the Serpentarium on South Dixie Highway. Res Like for so many others, the Serpentarium was a place of wonder for me in my youth. We visited the Serpentarium and it was an amazing experience that I remember vividly to this day. He was known as the "go-to guy" for snakebites. ``I feel like a man in his 60s.'' In August 2020, the remains of a 14-year-old boy were cut from a crocodile's stomach after the reptile ate him alive. 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. MIAMI, Sept. 3 (UPI)A 6yearold boy tumbled into a crocodile pit at the Miami Serpentarium today and a 14 foot, 1,800pound African crocodile snapped its jaws around the child's. The boy's family never sued, accepting only the maximum insurance payment, Haast said. I have such respect for Mr. Haast and for all of his work. A Disney spokeswoman did not go into detail about the tragic incident but said the resort was devastated and was helping the family and authorities. I visited The Serpentarium in '78. There was a croc that had lost its tail because it had bit at it after thinking it was another croc coming to steal its food. Of course he would buy the rare Indigo snakes, because they could rear up and spread their neck like a Cobra, but were not poisonous. We ran it over, and with a little coaxing, I convinced the driver to return. Knowing me from my letters, he seemed genuinely interested in the details I told him about my own small collection. See the article in its original context from. His first king cobra bite was in 1962. The whole experience seemed to do the trick, as he never displayed such fear of snakes again after that. There's a picture of me and an indigo snake, probably nearly as long as I was tall. However, sometime in my teens I developed a real fear of snakes, somewhat unusual since there were no poisonous varieties in my area. Others joined Haast. Im standing outside watching them search for someones baby, she wrote on Twitter. 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. I liked that his shows were practical and informative with very little hype, but fascinating nonetheless. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. It was a close call, one that underscored the county's need for an antivenin bank, Cruz said. I lived across South Dixie Highway from the Miami Serpentarium. He briefly lived in Utah and returned to Florida to live in Charlotte County 18 years ago. There were two fatal alligator attacks in Florida last year in the first reported deaths since 2007. So, on a trip to visit my parents in Miami, when Scot was two (1977), we took him to the Miami Serpentarium. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. They paid my mother something like $10 or more for the snake. Thanks for the update on Bill Haast! I'd rather go back in the ocean than back to the Serpentarium! His cane was an exotic mixture of ebony and ivory. The 35' cobra ended up on the roof (south side) of South Miami Senior High-my old high school-where it served proudly for many years. Keepers were forced to shoot and kill the 17-year-old gorilla named Harambe. As a joke on him, a staff member placed a rubber snake into one of the boxes that normally held a venomous snake for the show. Did you know that Charlie Baxter aka MT GRAVES IS STILL ALIVE & is one hell of a nice guy. Haast started collecting snakes and, after initial opposition from his mother, was allowed to keep them at home. It's a shame good things must always come to an end, isn't it? "Bill Haast, a Man Charmed by Snakes, Dies at 100", "Owner destroys crocodile that killed boy, may close serpentarium", "Icon: Bill Haast Snake handler, venom researcher, age 97", "100 years and kicking: Happy Birthday, Bill Haast", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bill_Haast&oldid=1079333500, This page was last edited on 26 March 2022, at 06:33. But he still wakes up each morning to turn snake venom from across the globe into freeze-dried powder for medical laboratories. . Haast eventually returned home, married and enrolled in airplane-mechanic school, but Florida called. He was bitten for the first time at summer camp a year later, when he tried to capture a small timber rattlesnake. 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. Cloud, a venom business where the public can pay to watch workers extract venom from snakes. In an enclosure) his parents should have supervised him much better. There, sitting at a desk was Bill Haast. I'm recommending this site to my grandson, Piers and now that I'm a snowbird residing in Ft. Myers part time, I'll keep watching for news of your 100th birthday party! I used to take the snakes I would find to a lady named Alma Bishop, who had a little shop in the Flamingo Bar. I grew up in Miami and loved the Serpentarium. Alligator seen dragging child into the water. We had an iguana that was too large to keep. I saw so many people face their phobias of snakes and actually touch one for the first time. The crocodile is believed to measure 2.5 to three . I remember seeing an alligator gulping down whole chickens and being allowed to handle an Indigo snake after Mr. Haast's presentation. More than twenty of those individuals recovered.[7]. One particular snake that I remember from my childhood visits to the Serpentarium was a big, oversized Florida Eastern Diamond Back rattlesnake. But I must say he had a good sense of humor too. What a rush. Authorities said the boy, who fell about three metres, was expected to recover after being picked up and dragged by Harambe for about 10 minutes. We also used to go to his show at the Serpentarium, and it fascinated my brother. According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, population growth and increasing participation in water-related activities are resulting in more frequent alligator-human interactions.
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