In Sicilian cities, where the water supply has never been something one can really take for granted, houses have "taniche" on their roofs – large containers in which water is stored.
Seafaring people traditionally had a wonderfully simple way of keeping them clean: they put a live eel in the tanica. The eel ate algae, insect larvae and whatever other small creatures found their way into the water – a tiny biological cleaning system requiring neither electricity nor chemicals.
My grandfather was a sailor, and my mother remembers him bringing home an eel, putting it into the rooftop tanica, and all the children gathering around to watch their new resident get to work. Apparently, they loved it.
My mother is now in her eighties and, 80 years later, she still laughs when she tells the story. The taniche are still there, up on Sicilian roofs, but those days the eels aren't really given this kind of jobs anymore!
Image courtesy of ChatGPT:
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A grandfather's rooftop eel, drawn from an 80-year-old family story
Alessandro Riolo's sailor grandfather kept the family's rooftop tanica clean the old Sicilian way: a live eel that ate algae and larvae. With the memory 80 years old and the practice gone, they had ChatGPT draw the scene their mother still laughs about.
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