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Well and truly bitten by snake love
WILLIAM EDWARD HAAST, SNAKE MAN 30-12-1910 - 15-6-2011 By DOUGLAS MARTIN
BILL Haast, a snake handler who injected himself every day for more than 60 years with a mix of venoms from 32 snake species to build up immunity, has died at home in Florida, aged 100.
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He figured he had handled more than 3 million poisonous snakes over the years, and he had the hands to prove it.
An eastern diamondback rattlesnake left one hand looking like a claw; a Malayan pit viper mangled an index finger; a cottonmouth bit a finger, which instantly turned black, prompting his wife to snip off the fingertip with garden clippers.
Haast was bitten at least 173 times by poisonous snakes - about 20 times almost fatally. It was all in a day's work for probably the best-known snake handler in the United States, a scientist-cum-showman who made enough money from milking toxic goo from slithery serpents to buy a cherry-red Rolls-Royce convertible.
Haast suspected his daily inoculations of mixed venoms might have explained his extraordinarily good health, but he was reluctant to make that claim until he reached 100.
He was director of the Miami Serpentarium Laboratories, a snake-venom producer in Florida. His original Miami Serpentarium, south of Miami, attracted 50,000 tourists a year for four decades.
The self-proclaimed ''Snakeman'' entertained paying customers by using his hands to grab snakes below their heads and force their teeth into soft plastic. Venom would then drain into test tubes fastened to the plastic. He did this about 100 times a day.
The serpentarium was more than just another roadside attraction. The price of a gram of freeze-dried venom from exotic snakes, requiring 100 or more extractions to accumulate, could be more than $US5000. The substance is an essential ingredient in making a serum to treat snakebite victims. It has also shown promise as a medicinal ingredient.
Haast and a Miami doctor treated more than 6000 people with a snake-venom serum that they and their patients contended was effective against multiple sclerosis and arthritis. But in 1980, the US Food and Drug Administration banned the product as useless after saying that numerous deficiencies had been found in Haast's manufacturing process. Nevertheless, researchers have continued to work on drugs made from venom in the hope of using it to treat cancer, Alzheimer's and other diseases.
Haast flew to various parts of the world to donate his antibody-rich blood to 21 different snakebite victims. Venezuela made him an honorary citizen after he went deep into the jungle to give a boy a pint of blood. The favour was returned in 1989 when the White House used secret connections to spirit a rare serum out of Iran to treat Haast as he fought to recover from a bite by a Pakistani pit viper. (Different venoms require different antidotes.)
Haast was born in Paterson, New Jersey, and caught his first garter snake at age seven. He suffered his first serious snake bite, by a timber rattlesnake at Boy Scout camp, at age 12. The same year, a copperhead's bite put him in hospital for a week.
When the young Haast brought his first poisonous snake home to the family apartment, his mother left home for three days, he said. She finally agreed to let him keep a snake or two in cages. He bought his first exotic snake, a diamondback rattler, from a catalogue, and after dropping out of school at 16, he joined a roadside snake show that made its way to Florida in the late 1920s.
The snake attraction soon failed during the Depression, so Haast went to work for a bootlegger in the Everglades, where he was pleased to find plenty of snakes. The bootlegger was arrested, and Haast found his way to an airline mechanics school and landed a job as a flight engineer with Pan American World Airways. He began travelling around the world, which gave him a chance to use his toolbox to smuggle snakes, including his first cobra.
Haast opened his Miami serpentarium in 1947, and his near-fatal snake bites became legend in the news media, particularly after the total passed 100 in the mid-1960s.
Haast closed the serpentarium in 1984 after a six-year-old boy fell into his crocodile pit and was fatally mauled. He moved his venom-gathering operation to Utah, but six years later returned to Florida and opened the facility in Punta Gorda, where he raised and milked snakes but did not resume his snake show.
For all the time he spent with snakes, Haast harboured no illusions that they liked him. ''You could have a snake for 30 years and the second you leave his cage door cracked, he's gone,'' he said in 1997. ''And they'll never come to you unless you're holding a mouse in your teeth.''
His first wife, Ann, divorced him over his snake obsession. His second, Clarita, and third, Nancy, pitched in enthusiastically.
He is survived by Nancy, two daughters, three grandchildren, two great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren. NEW YORK TIMES
Read more: Well and truly bitten by snake love
WILLIAM EDWARD HAAST, SNAKE MAN 30-12-1910 - 15-6-2011 By DOUGLAS MARTIN
BILL Haast, a snake handler who injected himself every day for more than 60 years with a mix of venoms from 32 snake species to build up immunity, has died at home in Florida, aged 100.
Advertisement: Story continues below
He figured he had handled more than 3 million poisonous snakes over the years, and he had the hands to prove it.
An eastern diamondback rattlesnake left one hand looking like a claw; a Malayan pit viper mangled an index finger; a cottonmouth bit a finger, which instantly turned black, prompting his wife to snip off the fingertip with garden clippers.
Haast was bitten at least 173 times by poisonous snakes - about 20 times almost fatally. It was all in a day's work for probably the best-known snake handler in the United States, a scientist-cum-showman who made enough money from milking toxic goo from slithery serpents to buy a cherry-red Rolls-Royce convertible.
Haast suspected his daily inoculations of mixed venoms might have explained his extraordinarily good health, but he was reluctant to make that claim until he reached 100.
He was director of the Miami Serpentarium Laboratories, a snake-venom producer in Florida. His original Miami Serpentarium, south of Miami, attracted 50,000 tourists a year for four decades.
The self-proclaimed ''Snakeman'' entertained paying customers by using his hands to grab snakes below their heads and force their teeth into soft plastic. Venom would then drain into test tubes fastened to the plastic. He did this about 100 times a day.
The serpentarium was more than just another roadside attraction. The price of a gram of freeze-dried venom from exotic snakes, requiring 100 or more extractions to accumulate, could be more than $US5000. The substance is an essential ingredient in making a serum to treat snakebite victims. It has also shown promise as a medicinal ingredient.
Haast and a Miami doctor treated more than 6000 people with a snake-venom serum that they and their patients contended was effective against multiple sclerosis and arthritis. But in 1980, the US Food and Drug Administration banned the product as useless after saying that numerous deficiencies had been found in Haast's manufacturing process. Nevertheless, researchers have continued to work on drugs made from venom in the hope of using it to treat cancer, Alzheimer's and other diseases.
Haast flew to various parts of the world to donate his antibody-rich blood to 21 different snakebite victims. Venezuela made him an honorary citizen after he went deep into the jungle to give a boy a pint of blood. The favour was returned in 1989 when the White House used secret connections to spirit a rare serum out of Iran to treat Haast as he fought to recover from a bite by a Pakistani pit viper. (Different venoms require different antidotes.)
Haast was born in Paterson, New Jersey, and caught his first garter snake at age seven. He suffered his first serious snake bite, by a timber rattlesnake at Boy Scout camp, at age 12. The same year, a copperhead's bite put him in hospital for a week.
When the young Haast brought his first poisonous snake home to the family apartment, his mother left home for three days, he said. She finally agreed to let him keep a snake or two in cages. He bought his first exotic snake, a diamondback rattler, from a catalogue, and after dropping out of school at 16, he joined a roadside snake show that made its way to Florida in the late 1920s.
The snake attraction soon failed during the Depression, so Haast went to work for a bootlegger in the Everglades, where he was pleased to find plenty of snakes. The bootlegger was arrested, and Haast found his way to an airline mechanics school and landed a job as a flight engineer with Pan American World Airways. He began travelling around the world, which gave him a chance to use his toolbox to smuggle snakes, including his first cobra.
Haast opened his Miami serpentarium in 1947, and his near-fatal snake bites became legend in the news media, particularly after the total passed 100 in the mid-1960s.
Haast closed the serpentarium in 1984 after a six-year-old boy fell into his crocodile pit and was fatally mauled. He moved his venom-gathering operation to Utah, but six years later returned to Florida and opened the facility in Punta Gorda, where he raised and milked snakes but did not resume his snake show.
For all the time he spent with snakes, Haast harboured no illusions that they liked him. ''You could have a snake for 30 years and the second you leave his cage door cracked, he's gone,'' he said in 1997. ''And they'll never come to you unless you're holding a mouse in your teeth.''
His first wife, Ann, divorced him over his snake obsession. His second, Clarita, and third, Nancy, pitched in enthusiastically.
He is survived by Nancy, two daughters, three grandchildren, two great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren. NEW YORK TIMES
Read more: Well and truly bitten by snake love
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