Didn't this happen to the Beverly Hillbillies, too?

KHOU reported yesterday on something bizarre in La Marque: a mysterious metal thing that's been leaking oil for a couple of weeks. It's in Bridget Gonzales' back yard, and the oil that's been coming out of a hole in the side has run through her yard and into a neighbor's property — but no one knows what the object is or where it came from. "It's clearly old, it's not something we've done and it's not something that we were aware of when we bought the property," Gonzales told Channel 11.

The object, which you can see in KHOU's video from the yard, isn't like anything Houstonist has seen, but we're not experts in old, industrial oil-leaking stuff, either (and no, it's not a barrel). The thing appears to be attached to something in the ground, and it's clearly been there for a while — the previous owner of the house, Hattie Dietz, said she never had a problem with the object, so she never asked what it was. But now she's worried: "It concerns me because I still own the property across the street," Dietz told Channel 11. "And if it's endangering our health, somebody really needs to do something about it."

Gonzales said she called the Galveston County health inspector's office, but they didn't know what the object was or whether the oil that came from it was dangerous. The health inspector and Railroad Commission told KHOU they're testing samples of the oil, but results won't be back for several weeks.