This Man Lived In A Snake Pit For 25 Days In Amarillo

Move Over Florida Man, this man might have you beat.

A Facebook user from Amarillo came and asked if anybody remembers a man at Thomson Park who apparently stayed in a pit full of snakes. Seems pretty vague and out there, right?

Well, turns out that the guy mentioned was quite the phenomenon. The post got a whole flurry of comments with people recalling about their experiences with this man. Over 100 comments came.

User Debbie Mckinney Langwell replied

Yes, you could call and talk to him and he was on the radio also. He sat in the cage with the snakes and would just talk to people. I had forgotten all about that!! I remember it in early 70’s.

User Tom Bowerman recounted

I remember someone brought a prairie rattler and the guy had them put it in the pit with him. He kept it pushed over in front of the small air conditioner that was in the pit to keep the snakes and him cool. Some time later the rattler was tired of being cold and crawled under his pillow. When he woke up the next morning he had a well warmed and aggravated rattleron his hands. I think he was even bitten by the snake that day

So turns out that this guy was pretty well known to Amarillo residents who were around in the early. Many have either fond or scary memories of this man who sat in a pit of venomous snakes.

After digging around some more in the comments section, it turns out that the guy's name was Bill Keeoga Rust, a man from Kentucky who was out to break a world record for the longest time living with snakes.

Rust was put into the pit with seven rattlesnakes, a copperhead, and a cottonmouth snake. He also kept a telephone, mattress, and toilet inside the pit and would receive food through a chute.

Spending 25 days inside the pit, Rust would receive phone calls and visitors who came to see this strange achievement in the works.

After being taken out of the pit, Rust expressed that it was not something he would ever want to do again, even if someone else were to break his record.

So anybody out there crazy enough is reading this, just know that if you want the world record for the longest time spent in a pit of snakes the record stands at 25 days.