The man who mesmerized generations of paying customers from 1947 to 1984 by extracting venom at his Miami Serpentarium as a spine-tingling South Florida attraction is dead.

He died of natural causes on Wednesday in Punta Gorda, on Florida’s west coast, where he had made his home.

He was 100 years old.

The key to longevity here...play with snakes. Venomous ones.