Rocky Point Man Hopes to Breed Threatened Snake Species

A Rocky Point man's love for snakes and reptiles has his basement slithering. 

Tom Bush, and his girlfriend, Cindy Truen, own nearly 30 species of snakes and 35 varieties of reptiles that live in the basement of their Rocky Point House, Village Beacon Record reports. 

Bush's cold-blooded friends include nearly everything that crawls and slithers. He estimates that he and Truen spend nearly 35 hours a week caring for multiple varieties of king, corn and milk snakes in addition to ball pythons, boa constrictors, lizards, frogs and spiders. 

One of the most unusual in his collection, Bush said is a pair of eastern indigo snakes. The indigo snakes - named for their iridescent scales that take on a purplish hue under sunlight - are native to Florida and Georgia, but have been listed as "threatened" on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's registry of endangered species since the 1970s. 

Due to this, he's had to obtain special permit to obtain the snakes, and an annual permit from New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to keep them.

Bush said he hopes to breed the pair when they reach maturity in 2015, and donates a snake to The Orianne Society, a nonprofit in Georgia that is dedicated to the conservation of imperiled snakes worldwide and the eastern indigo in particular.

Read more on the Times Beacon Record about Tom Bush's unusual collection and his efforts to help others on Long Island understand snakes.