AUDASE

Snake handler who mesmerized generations of tourists is dead By CAROL ROSENBERG MIAMI HERALDcrosenberg@miamiherald.com    Bill Haast delighted tourists five times a day at The Serpentarium on Dixie Highway in Miami. If snake venom holds the secret to a long life, then Bill Haast had the magic. The man who mesmerized generations of paying customers from 1947 to 1984 by extracting venom at his Miami Serpentarium as a spine-tingling South Florida attraction is dead. He died of natural causes on Wednesday in Punta Gorda, on Florida’s west coast, where he had made his home. He was 100 years old. Born William E. Haast on Dec. 30, 1910 in Paterson, N.J., he was a South Florida celebrity for surviving successive venomous snakebites. Friday, his wife Nancy put his lifetime tally at 172. The legacy left him immunized, enabling him to donate life-saving blood to 21 victims across the years. All survived, she said. Grainy black-and-white television footage from 1962, now part of the Wolfson Archive, shows a fit, toothy 51-year-old Haast in a hospital recovering from his 79th snake bite -- his first ever by a King Cobra. A rare survivor, he declared himself doing “very well, anxious to get back to work.” Why? “I must.” Haast’s passing reminded South Floridians of a certain age of the bygone era when entrepreneurs could set up quirky roadside attractions along Dixie Highway, US 1, to thrill both local school kids and wintering vacationers who fled the cold. “He was a really nice man with a big heart,” said his grand-niece Michelle Haast of Miami. “Not to mention pretty damn smart. And a bit crazy.” Twitter accolades came in from across the globe. The Reptile Centre in Northampton, England, declared him “an inspirational man within the world of reptiles.” In North Carolina, a chemist offered this salute: “Resssssssst in Peace Bill Haast.” Part scientist, part entertainer, Haast spent his early years in Miami as a mechanic for Pan Am, while he built the snake farm he called The Serpentarium along a portion of U.S. 1 that is today called Pinecrest. 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 was into it for the science on how snake venom affected the body,” said the grand-niece who worked at The Serpentarium as a teen in the 1980s. He had done research for a polio vaccine, sought a cure for multiple sclerosis. “He’d put on a show just to supplement the research for the while,” she said. “And in the end the research could take care of itself.” The attraction had a gift shop, 400-pound turtles, a 20-foot-long python. It also had a pit with a 12-foot-long crocodile called “Cookie” that weighed, literally, a ton. Tragically, a 6-year-old boy fell in and died in 1977. Haast went to the pit with a pistol the very next day and shot the croc. He closed up the business in 1984, moved to Utah for a few years but returned to Florida in 1990, and settled in a Punta Gorda ranch with Nancy, his third wife, and some 400 snakes that supplied his Miami Serpentarium Laboratories. “Miami was in Bill’s heart to the end,” his widow said. “It was his adopted city. No matter where we went, Miami was Bill’s real home.” By his 95th birthday, he was a bit of a recluse. He agreed to chat only by telephone with a Miami Herald reporter. “I know a lot of people in Miami still remember the Serpentarium and wonder what became of me,” he said, “that’s why I’m talking to you.’’ It was 2006 and he was still extolling the virtues of venom, saying he injected himself weekly with a cocktail from five snakes -- cobras, cottonmouths, kraits, mambas and rattlers -- homeopathy the Food and Drug Admnistration would never endorse. “I could become a poster boy for the benefits of venom,’’ Haast boasted. “If I live to be 100, I’ll really make the point.’’ And so he did. On Friday, the Roberson Funeral Home of Port Charlotte said arrangements were incomplete. Besides his wife, he left two daughters, Naia Hanna and Shantih, living in California. A son, William Haast Jr. predeceased him. He also left three grandchildren, two great grandchildren and two great great grandchildren.