Talk:Bill Haast

Categories

Haast is very difficult to categorize. I can't find anything specific to put him in, other than generic cats such as by race, gender and nationality, which really don't add anything here. If you can think of a category that does fit, have at it. -- Donald Albury^(Talk) 13:08, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Recency

The story of Bill Haast is in desperate need of an update, so much more has happened since 1965: the decline of the Serpentarium's popularity and closing in 1984, the conflicts with the FDA on PROVEN, the move to Provo,Utah and the return to Florida, this time to Punta Gorda. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.202.126.124 (talk) 19:09, October 25, 2006 (UTC)

The biography I used as a source was written in 1965. If you know of any reliable sources, then use them to add the information. I haven't had any lick finding much of anything about him on the Internet. -- Donald Albury 01:07, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I think the article should also discuss the tragic death of a child who fell into a pit with the Serpentarium's crocodiles. As I recall, it was the African croc -- the one that had bitten off part of its tail -- that killed him. I would add this myself but I only know of it from reading a contemporaneous newspaper article and surely would get too many details wrong, and I certainly have no sources to cite. I can't even be sure of the date, though it must have been in the early or mid 1980s.

As I recall, the boy's father had set him on top of the wall surrounding the pit so he could see inside. The boy had started slapping the wall to get the crocs' attention, not realizing that this was the signal the keepers used to announce feeding time. When the crocs drew near and found no food, one looked up and either roared growled; this scared the boy so much that he lost his balance and fell in. The croc then grabbed him and held him underwater. Haast, his employees and several patrons jumped in and hit the croc about the head with aluminum baseball bats which Haast kept handy for such emergencies, hoping it would let go of the boy. The croc tolerated this for a surprisingly long time -- about 45 minutes, I believe -- before finally letting go of the body. (He was very large and his armor was thick enough to absorb the blows.) If I remember correctly, the croc was then returned to the wild in Africa instead of being destroyed.

This must have been shortly before the Serpentarium closed, which leads me to suspect that it was part of what led to the institution's demise. 4.232.225.11 07:07, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Re: death of the baby, the information above sounds correct, except that Hasst killed the crocodile himself by emptying his Luger 9mm into its head that day or shortly after. Also it ought to be mentioned that Haast used to release a King Cobra and catch it by the neck with one hand. 76.109.84.143

Whether or not the information sounds correct is completely irrelevant. Nothing 'ought' to be mentioned without a valid reference. Find a reliable source, then we can discuss its inclusion. Freikorp (talk) 07:19, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

I believe he took the King Cobra out on Sundays. Never saw it. There was a time magazine article about him after he was bitten by a Tiger Snake (?) which supposedly has both hemotoxin (like pit vipers) and neurotoxin (like cobra, coral) and ended up on a respirator (or in an iron lung). Also, I understand that, in contrast to Ross Allen, Haast did not "milk" the venom, but rather allowed the snakes to inject only what came out naturally, so there was little bruising of the venom glands and the snakes were able to produce longer. Plyingfig (talk) 00:22, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Florida Trend article

Check this out for a great recent blurb about Bill: http://www.floridatrend.com/article.asp?aID=49389 Ximagineer (talk) 06:23, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Not much there to use in the article, and part of that is already cited from the biography. I'll see what I can do with it. -- Donald Albury 15:23, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Crocodile

The crocodile was shot. Bill was so upset he shot the corodile himself. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mshaast (talk • contribs) 14:33, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Picture?

Is there any way to get a picture of this guy? If he's the person I'm thinking of, even though he's around 100 years old at this point, he only looks like 65 or so. Something to be said for mildly envenoming yourself, perhaps? (joke) Tuxedobob (talk) 18:05, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I have pictures of him from a visit in the '60s, but I don't know how to add it. Plyingfig (talk) 00:18, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Birthdate

[1] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tommieboi (talk • contribs) 03:15, April 20, 2010 (UTC)

Templates

Someone slapped COI and copypaste templates on the article page, but left no information here about them. I intend to remove those templates in a few days if no one offers here a good reason to keep them. -- Donald Albury 11:12, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Very sad

What happened to this article?

It used to be about 10x the size, and had pictures of Mr. Haast handling all kinds of snakes.

??? 24.51.217.118 (talk) 12:54, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Pictures...?

Why have all the pictures been removed from this article??? There used to be pictures of Bill Haast handling snakes and whatnot. What happened to all the pictures? 00:46, 22 February 2021 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.138.6.121 (talk)

Shameful

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.[2]

While all that is factual, it's worded to make him appear like some sort of carnival barker. He was a pioneering scientist and herpetologist. The Serpentarium was a working laboratory providing education to the public in the spirit of a museum. The public access funded his research into fields such as a potential treatment for MS. 57.135.233.22 (talk) 12:20, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Well, that is what he was best known for. As a kid, I greatly enjoyed school field trips to see his show. There is nothing wrong with entertaining people, especially if you can fold a little education into it. To your point, what do you suggest as new wording for the lead? The lead must summarize the most important parts of his career and life. Donald Albury 15:32, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

To your point, what do you suggest as new wording for the lead? The lead must summarize the most important parts of his career and life. Donald Albury

I don't have a problem with the lede, necessarily, if the body can provide some balance. But I wish this article could be restored to where it once was. I can't give you a date where I feel it went wrong, but I feel at one time it was much more informative WRT to Bill Haast the person. The way the article reads now it makes him sound like some type of alligator wrangler or a hick and that's not the person he was.

At some point, the article was aggressively chopped, presumably by a critic of Bill Haast. 57.135.233.22 (talk) 17:59, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Can you be more specific? I just looked at the edit history back to 2011, and do not see the agressive chopping you are alleging. Donald Albury 23:57, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

I started watching this article in 2010 after reading a fascinating article about Bill in a magazine. I don't recall any aggressive chopping of content and after searching through the history myself I can't see any since then.

I just did some minor rewording to the lead. It seemed redundant to clarify that customers were paying to be entertained at a tourist attraction. Of course they were. The source does make it very clear that Bill was, among other things, an entertainer (which I agree is nothing to be ashamed of), so it would problematic not to mention this. If someone wants to flesh out his other work though, that would of course be welcome too. Damien Linnane (talk) 03:07, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't consider Haast's activities any different than what Jack Hanna or Steve Irwin were doing. The later two did this for a television audience, whereas Haast did this for a live audience. Either way, they made money from this, but Haast is looked at in a more negative light for the "tourist attraction" connotation, which is factual, but the tourist attraction moniker has a negative connotation for whatever reason, where Hanna and Irwin making their money from television doesn't carry this same stigma. And Hanna and Irwin surely made much more money than Haast, if that's the actual criticism. It doesn't seem balanced to me when you compare the tone and language of the lede of this article with the articles of either of the two former persons.

All three of these persons did what they did, ultimately, to further education (and science) and they all succeeded at this.

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

Factual, but this is just the common method of extracting venom from snakes. If one is not familiar with this, it might seem unusual or cruel, esp, with the wording that he "physically extracted" the venom or used "force" (of course it's a 'physical process' - he didn't do it by thought!). Anyhow, it's nothing specific to Haast.57.135.233.22 (talk) 08:03, 22 July 2023 (UTC)