Just in time for Mary’s month of May comes this little oddity from sunny California:

A Mexican restaurant in this border town is drawing the curious and the faithful to see what some believe is a likeness of the Virgin Mary that appeared miraculously on a griddle.

A cook at Las Palmas restaurant was the first to see the image.

“She started to cry and didn’t want to clean the griddle anymore,” said Brenda Martinez, who manages the family-owned restaurant.

The griddle has been taken off the stove and is now displayed in a room behind the kitchen that is quickly filling up with rosaries, flowers, votive candles and other offerings left by visitors from the Imperial Valley and from Mexicali across the border.

“I feel she is here with us. I can feel her presence,” said Joe Acuna, who owns a landscaping firm.

“She looks real, very real,” handyman Mike Breseno said in Spanish.

The Rev. Edward Horning, associate pastor at St. Mary Catholic Church in nearby El Centro, examined the griddle Thursday. He would not say whether he thought the outline on the griddle looked like the Virgin Mary.

But he said, “If God wants to do something like this, he can do it.”

To some visitors, the image looks like the Our Lady of Guadalupe artwork in a basilica in Mexico City, considered Mexico’s most popular religious and cultural symbol. Mary is said to have appeared on a hill outside the city in 1531.

Among the offerings brought to Las Palmas was a replica of a painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Visitors glance at the painting and then the image on the griddle — and some see a similarity.

“She’s here, I know it,” landscaper Alfredo Luna said.

You can read more at the link.