Close encounters in the Modena Apennines? A special van with Texas Truck plates and the sign 'Western - Geophysical research' inspects the grounds of the Rinaldi estate with strange machinery in search of something that frankly escapes our comprehension, even though we read in the title sign that on 5 April 1980 they were looking for oil. It sounds like the beginning of a Spielberg film, but instead it is a film by Francesco Rinaldi, who in the space of a few frames returns to his favourite subject, the depiction of nature and peasant time. Delving deeper, it turns out that Western Ricerche Geofisiche is in fact the Italian branch of Western Geophysical, a company specialising in oil research by means of seismic surveys. For a while, the company also worked in collaboration with ENI. What solution to the energy crisis was thought to have been found in the Rinaldi field remains a mystery. A more plausible hypothesis for those times is that an unidentified flying object was sighted nearby.