When we talk about "one of a kinds" from the "day", Dr. William(Bill) Haast must surely be mentioned

William Haast is the director of the Miami Serpentarium Laboratories, a facility near Punta Gorda, Florida, which produces snake venom for medical and research use. Bill has been extracting venom from venomous snakes since he was a boy.
From 1947 until 1985, he operated the Miami Serpentarium, a tourist attraction south of Miami, Florida where he extracted venom from snakes in front of paying customers. Haast physically extracts venom from venomous snakes by holding them by the head and forcing them to strike a rubber membrane covering a vial. As a result of handling these snakes, Haast had been bitten 170 times, more often than any other known human.
The Serpentarium opened at the end of 1947. For the first five years Bill, Clarita(wife) and Bill Jr.(son)were the only staff. Bill Jr. eventually left, having lost interest in snakes, but not before he had been bitten four times by venomous snakes. Haast constantly improved the Serpentarium. By 1965 the Serpentarium housed more than 500 snakes in 400 cages and three pits in the courtyard. Haast was extracting venom 70 to 100 times a day from some 60 species of venomous snakes, usually in front of an audience of paying customers. He would free the snakes on a table in front of him, then catch the snakes bare-handed. Soon after opening the Serpentarium Bill Haast began experimenting with building up an acquired immunity to the venom of King, Indian, and Cape Cobras by injecting himself with gradually increasing quantities of venom he had extracted from his snakes, a practice called mithridatism. In 1954 Haast was bitten by a common Krait. He at first hoped that his immunization to cobra venom would protect him from the krait venom, and he continued with his regular activities for several hours. However, the venom eventually did affect him, and he was taken to a hospital where it took him several days to recover. A krait antivenom was shipped from India, but when it arrived after a 48-hour flight, Haast refused to take it.

Haast received his first cobra bite less than a year after he started his immunization program. During the 1950s he was bitten by cobras about twenty times. His first King cobra bite was in 1962. Haast has also been bitten by a Green Mamba. On several occasions Haast has donated his blood to be used in treating snake-bite victims when a suitable antivenin was not available.

In 1949 Haast began supplying venom to a medical researcher at the University of Miami for experiments in the treatment of polio. The experiments gave encouraging results, but were still in preliminary clinical trials when the Salk polio vaccine was released in 1955.

Haast's hands have suffered venom-caused tissue damage, culminating in the loss of a finger following a bite from a Malayan Pit Viper in 2004. As a result of the damage, Haast no longer attempts to handle venomous snakes. As of 2008 he continues to have his wife inject him with small amounts of snake venom.

William Haast was one of those individuals who influenced many young people to become involved with animals and the pursuit of a zoological career, or a life working with exotic's. I know he was one of my animal hero's.