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GBlist: re: Rainwater collection



on Fri, 23 May 1997
woodeneagle@juno.com (R. Scott Waterman) wrote:

>    I have heard stories of birds and animals getting into the cisterns
>    and drowning, and not being found 'til the water tastes
>    funny.....however, I have not heard of anyone actually getting sick
>    because of a contaminated water supply. 

		
               TRUE TALES FROM THE CISTERN  v.1

			=== * ===

When I was as student, I lived in a farmhouse whose water was supplied by a
cistern. A girlfriend (a veterinary student) was down for the weekend with
her cats and one turned up missing. (I had a BIG long-haired shepherd so we
figured the cat was just "acclimatising").

By Sunday morning, she (the vet) was getting seriously concerned so we set
out on a white cat-finding mission and eventually ended up peering into the
black depths of the cistern. Sure enough, there was a whitish cat (and
several mice) down at the bottom.

I grabbed a spade (long-handled round-mouthed shovel in some dialects) and
carefully scooped-up the feline body and raised it to the surface.

Just as the cat broke the surface of the water, it "melted" like so much
primordial ooze and I heard an "ULP!" as I turned to see the vet (not
typically a squeamish type) running up the stairs with her hand over her
mouth. 

Obviously, the whitish (originally orange) cat had been in that cistern for
a LONG time (since before I moved in) and was not her white cat which
turned-up later (alive).

The moral of the story : 

Install a screen over the cistern itself (as well as the inlet to the rain
leader) to prevent non-swimming critters from meeting an untimely death.

Me ? In the two years that I lived in that house, I wasn't sick a day .
Whether it was from having consumed/bathed in that cold brewed cat/mouse
cistern tea, I can't say. As to "funny" tastes, it wasn't any funnier than
the hard water from the wells in that area.

For the Computationally-inclined, (to borrow Hal Levin's label) an
8'x10'x5' cistern seems to be able to handle 1 dead cat and several dead
mice without any ill-effect to the water users.

[End of tasteless (true) tale for the day]

--
Rob "Iron-guts" Tom
---------- * ------------
be417@FreeNet.Carleton.ca
Kanata,  Ontario,  Canada

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