Pokhara in Nepal

As a child it is inevitable to have bruises and wounds, that’s part of growing up. But this young lad from Aliso Viejo experienced something out of the ordinary after his wound turned out to be something else.

4-year-old Paul Franklin was playing in the sand when he fell and scraped his knee during a family vacation at the beach.

Paul’s parents thought it was just a normal wound and gave it a first aid.

Paul’s father, Ken said, “We cleaned it up and put a Band-Aid on it.”

However, weeks later, Paul’s knee got swollen and infected. His mother, Rachael said, “I came home and his knee was the size of an orange and hot to the touch and he’s limping. And I’m like, okay, we have to go to urgent care.”

So they took the young boy to a doctor but the physician didn’t see anything to worry about the wound. The doctor just gave an antibiotic and warned them not to pop it out. The antibiotic helped for a while but the wound failed to heal and it was turning black.

Rachael then decided to drain the wound, and got the shock of her life.

“It looked like a rock. It was a black thing,” she said. “I put it on a paper towel and I’m like, ‘That is a weird-looking rock. It has swirls on it.’ And I turn it over and it is a sea snail.”

Apparently, a tiny sea snail egg got stuck inside Paul’s knee when he fell at the beach and grew inside his skin for three weeks.

This kind of snail is the type that can live and grow in any kind of environment including under human skin.

And to prove that it was indeed a sea snail, Rachael put the creature in water and it moved. Despite the unnerving three weeks ordeal, Paul made a quick recovery from his bizarre wound. Meanwhile, the family is keeping a good sense of humor about the discovery of the mollusk.