My Buddy George Dawson Worked with Bill Haast at the Miami Serpentarium

by George Dawson

Our good friend Bruce Buckley sent me a picture recently of a water moccasin eating a black racer. A conversation followed about snakes and he gave me a link to a collection of stories about Bill Haast who owned the Miami Serpentarium http://www.pbase.com/image/64581068. As I once worked there I wrote of some of my experiences and submitted it that web site.

Here is the story.

Seeing this story of Bill Haast brought back many good memories of my working for him from early September 1957 through March 1958 when I left his employ to return to college. He is one of the most unforgettable people I have ever met.

I wrote him a letter in the summer of 1957 asking him if I could come to work at the Sepentarium. I had just finished my AA degree in biology at the Florida College in Tampa and wanted to attend the University of Miami. He offered me a job at $70.00 per week for a six-day week. I took it and moved my pregnant wife from Tampa to a mobile home park about 100 yards to the north of the Serpentarium. Immediately the adventure began.

The workday began with cleaning the compound of every bit of trash. Haast’s eye didn’t miss anything. He micromanaged my sweeping and showed me how to move the broom more efficiently and faster than the way I was doing it. We workers wouldn’t dare sit down to rest and he didn’t either. In fact, he only left the compound one time in the seven months I was there. He drove to Ocala to attend a meeting of attraction owners and operators. He even had a person come to the Serpentarium every couple of weeks to cut his hair!

There were only three of us working at the Serpentarium at the time other than Haast and his wife Clarita: Jim Lowe, myself, and a sales clerk/ticket seller in the gift shop. We knew Clarita as C. L. Whenever Jim or I were giving tours the other was picking up trash inside and out of the cages and enclosures, sweeping or cleaning glass on the cages. We did the outside glass and Haast did the inside. We would alternate the touring duties. We, like Haast, wore white uniforms and shoes. C.L. did the presentation for all milking demonstrations. This demo came at the end of each tour. She was very good at building tension and a sense of excitement about the handling of the snakes.

As some of the writers of comments mentioned he had two daughters with C. L: Naia Hannah and Shantee. Naia hannah was given this name as it was an early name of the King Cobra. The King Cobra was later renamed Ophiophagus (snake eater) hannah. Our daughter was born on January 10th, 1958, while I was at the Serpentarium. We liked the name Hannah so much we also named our child Hannah.

Haast could take a good joke. Once Jim Lowe, and I found a warbler dead on the grounds. We decided that we would play a trick on Haast. We kept the bird in a freezer for a couple of days and started talking when we were in the presence of Haast about how fast my reflexes were. One day when he was working with us on a project around the pits, we placed the bird on a branch hanging over the pit wall. Jim pointed to the bird and said “George see if you can catch that little yellow bird up there.” I climbed up and along the wall, acting as serious as I could and then leaped up and snatched the bird off the branch. Haast was jumping up and down and saying, “He did it, he really did it,” until I dropped the dead bird in his hand. We all had a good laugh.

Another time, just after we had lowered the pit walls by knocking out the top two rows of blocks and refinishing them with a stucco to appear as stonework, Jim cut out footprints from avocado skins. Avocado skins turn black when they oxidize. Early the next morning Jim placed the cutouts on top of the wall on the fresh concrete making it appear as if someone with tarred feet had walked on the wall. Haast about went crazy thinking of the time and expense it would take to fix the wall. When Jim peeled the skins off he did not see the humor at first but came around to enjoy the trick.

One last story about the Serpentarium is about my TV debut. The first time I appeared on television was when the big Nile crocodile was delivered. We had a plan to get it into the compound. This big guy weighted 1400 pounds and was about 11 feet long. He was in a trailer that came, for some reason, from Louisiana. It had wooden sides, and a temporary top nailed to the sides. The truck and trailer pulled up on the front lawn of the Serpentarium and a few boards from the top were removed. All was calm for a moment but suddenly the croc exploded upward. He had his month taped shut and was banging his head to the right and left sides of the trailer resulting in a tooth being knocked out. The plan was to get a bag over his eyes, which will often calm crocadilians, and then get a rope around his snout and the bag. After a few tries we were successful. A few minutes later the trailer gate was lowered and the croc was on the ground and calm. Step two of the plan was to roll him into a giant stretcher made of two metal pipes several feet longer than the croc with a heavy canvas sling between the pipes. Several of us would jump on the croc, pin him down, roll him on his side, work the sling under one side, and roll him to the other side, hopefully getting the sling under him. One of the local TV stations had been alerted and had cameras running.

On the count of three 8 of us jumped him including a truck driver who was passing by, heading south on U.S. 1. I somehow ended up at the top of the tail, with my knees jammed against the crocs legs. All was well until the croc started thrashing and tossed off the rope and the bag covering his eyes. Everyone took off, but I had my legs folded under me and was the last to leave. As I was practically digging a trench with my fingers and churning feet, that big tail came around and sent me sprawling. It was all on the evening news. When friends saw me on TV, I was teased about being reduced to a white flash on the screen. I don’t recall what it took to get the green stain out of those white uniforms.

Eventually we got the crocs eyes covered again, picked him up with the sling and carried him though the front door and gift shop to the pit and slid him into his new home. If my memory is correct, this was not the croc called Cookie that killed the boy years later. I think Cookie was the American Crocodile exhibited there at the same time.

There are other stories I could tell about such as the father who put his three or four year old over the wall of the croc pit to retrieve a toy that had fallen in, the time that Haast got wrapped up by a python and the masochistic kid who came frequently with a bodyguard to keep him from hurting himself, the time Jim and I convinced Haast his eyes were turning orange due to his diet, his sleeping with his head down on inclined planes and his birthday party in the tortoise and iguana habitat.