Snail Egg Grew & Hatched Inside Boy’s Knee

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No one thinks that a live creature will emerge from a child’s everyday “owie.”

But that’s just happened to 4-year-old Paul Franklin of Aliso Viejo, Calif. It started when he fell and cut his knee on a rock during a family vacation to the beach, the Orange County Register reports.

When it became swollen, Paul’s mom, Rachael, took her son to urgent care, where the doctor said Paul had a staph infection.

But after a course of antibiotics, the wound had not healed; in fact, Rachael noticed her son’s knee was turning black, CBS reports in the video above. Against a doctor’s recommendation, she squeezed the wound to drain it.

A black snail shot out of her son’s knee. “He moved!” Rachael screamed, she recalled to the Register. “There’s a freakin’ little guy in there! Bubbles were coming up.”

Paul’s father, Ken, believes his son must have fallen on a nest on that rock, forcing an egg into his knee, where it began gestating.

Paul, whose knee is almost completely healed, has named the snail Turbo.