As many a lifelong local can attest , Rhode Island ’ s one and only zoo ordinarily is teeming with noise . Not quite due to the roars of lions , tigers and bears ( our big cats are more the purring type ), but rather the joyful gasps and laughs of two-legged visitors . Nearby I-95 usually whirrs with rushing cars while the adjacent park emits bicycle chimes , scrimmage shouts or even event chatter . Yet , in the throes of COVID-19 , there was just silence .

In late February , RWPZ ’ s executive director , Jeremy Goodman , and his team were monitoring the COVID-19 outbreak while it was still in Asia and began gathering best practices — from the state health department , the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , Asian amusement park associations , overseas zoos already dealing with the pandemic

— and devised a plan to ensure the safety of the zoo ’ s staff , guests and animals . The measures included mandatory mask-wearing , symptom screenings , temperature checks , indoor plexiglass partitions and contact tracing . They also asked many of their office employees — such as the finance , development , PR and education departments — to work from home . Only people who needed to be on grounds , like the animal care and operations staffs , continued coming in .

“ But because we have such specialized staff , we worried about the virus going through all of the keepers . Who would take care of the animals ? We can ’ t have someone in finance come down to train the elephants ; it just doesn ’ t work that way ,” Goodman says . “ So , to minimize the potential spread , we separated the staff into two non-overlapping teams , making sure there was consistency across both .”

For example , of the four North American keepers , two were placed on team A while the others were assigned to team B . Normally , the zoo operates on a sixteen keeper minimum per day , but with just twenty-eight keepers total , splitting up the animal staff meant only fourteen would be available each day . Thus , the staff switched to ten-hour shifts in order to give them enough time to get the work done . The