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Bill Haast, a Man Charmed by Snakes, Dies at 100 (2011)

• e40 12y ago
  In the 70's I lived in Miami and would regularly go to the Serpentarium. I watched him milk a very large cobra. What was unique about it: he would dump it out onto a grassy area, in the middle of a building in the complex, lined with people on the edges. There was no fence between us and him. And the cobra. He would do his thing and grab it and walk/pull it over to the side where we would all crowd around and watch him milk it. I still remember that place fondly. .
• gajomi 12y ago
  >Bill Haast figured he had handled more than three million poisonous snakes over the years, and he had the hands to prove it. If we assume that it takes no more than 10 seconds to "handle" a snake. This would mean he spent no less than 23 years continuously handling one snake right after another, without any breaks for food, sleep, or anything at all. Unless we are imagining an even more liberal version of handling than my calculation allows for I find the claim doubtful.
  • snakeymath 12y ago
    Your math is incorrect. 3,000,000 snakes * 10 seconds / 86400 seconds in a day = 347.22 days, which is less than a year. If he was spending 3 minutes per snake, 8 hours per day, every day of every year, that's 51.37 years of snake-handling, which is less than what he actually did. So, his claim may actually be plausible.
    • gajomi 12y ago
      Oops. My mistake. I think I must have accidentally calculated this assuming one hour per day. Thanks for pointing this out.