The Story Behind West Place Animal Sanctuary in Tiverton
For Wendy Taylor, it began with an old Victorian and a love for animals.
February 11, 2021
It’s one of those fall days, a classic New England nor’easter sending the rain sideways. On the radio, I hear that wind gusts could reach sixty miles per hour. Driving past the white-capped Sakonnet River, I believe it.
My destination a Victorian home sitting imposingly at the crest of a hill appears almost ominous in this weather. I park and struggle with my car door, trying not to lose it to a gust of wind, then walk the rest of the way up the drive. I am looking at the outbuildings on this unusual property, wondering where I’ll find my host, when I see her: a tiny figure in coveralls and rain gear, smiling widely and waving as she strides up the hill. The wind and rain do not seem to bother Wendy Taylor in the least.
How the zoo’s mainstays, both two- and four-legged, are faring amid the pandemic.
January 20, 2021
Willie the donkey joins his alpaca friends in the farmyard. Photo by Meaghan Susi
“It was eerie. Quiet as can be,” says Matt Fugate, an adaptations keeper at Roger Williams Park Zoo (RWPZ), as he walks me through the grounds. “It was really strange continuing to do the same job I’ve always done, but with the complete absence of sound. Very cinema-esque.”
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.
The pandemic has not hindered work for the common good.
January 7, 2021
Meaghan Susi
“Well, it’s true, we do not live in a zoo. But man is an animal too.” –Dr. Doolittle
Like most Rhode Islanders, visits to a zoo were part of my childhood, although I have to admit it was the old Slater Park Zoo in Pawtucket, where my grandparents lived our child care during the summers. But like most, when my children were young, visits to Roger Williams Park Zoo were part of the regular summer curriculum. Almost twenty-four years ago, I was asked to join their board of trustees and I am still at it and as passionate as ever.
Snapshot: Foster Fowl at Frerichs Farm in Warren
An abandoned baby peacock found a home under the wing of a chicken at Frerichs Farm.
December 15, 2020
Photograph by Meaghan Susi
In all his years raising peafowl, Warren farmer David Frerichs had never seen a mother refuse to sit until 2020, when a rare white peahen laid her eggs outside of her nest box and walked away. Frerichs tried to do right by the clutch. He placed them in the nest box, but the peahen sat elsewhere. He set up an incubator, but it failed. Recognizing that motherhood comes in many forms, Frerichs snuck the last four viable eggs beneath broody chicken hens and hoped for the best. While three peacock chicks hatched, one died after birth and another drowned in a deluge. But this little survivor thrived beneath the wings of a Rhode Island Red, who can’t leave the coop without her chick crying out for her. “This baby is probably half the size of the mother now,” Frerichs says, “and she’s still dedicated