What kind of compound path is this?

I've recently had a client submit an artwork that I can't seem to reverse-engineer. While I don't necessarily need to, this dang thing is keeping me up at night because I truly don't understand how it works.

So when first opening up the artwork it looks like this:

It looks fairly normal, but upon further inspection it gets quite interesting. If I UNGROUP the compound path, it gives me two separate compound paths:

Strange right? If I try to simply select both of these, and hit "create compound path" it does nothing. The closest I can get it to the initial compound path is if I select both, and hit "minus front", but it doesn't give me a single compound path as a result.

I also have tried RELEASING the compound path, instead of ungrouping, and it gives me three objects (the texture seems to disappear):

Any thoughts on this? If someone can tell me the best way to upload/share the file on here, I'd be more than happy to do that so you guys can see this.