Sea Snail Lived Inside Aliso Boy's Knee for 3 Weeks

When Rachel Franklin squeezed her 4-year-old's injured knee, she had no way to prepare for what came out.

A tiny spiral shell the size of a pebble emerged from the wound. And inside that shell, something was moving.

"There's a freakin' little guy in there!" she told the Orange County Register. "Bubbles were coming up."

A tiny sea snail had been lodged inside little Paul Franklin's knee since he skinned it on a family vacation to Spooner's Cove three weeks earlier.

The knee wouldn't heal, she told the newspaper. A family doctor suspected an antibiotic-resistant superbug was to blame, so Paul's mother changed his bedsheets daily and fed him a heavy course of antibiotics for 10 days.

On the last day of the regimen, the knee hadn't healed and mom decided to drain the apparent infection. Then out popped the sea snail.

Paul and his 2-year-old brother Luke kept it as a pet. "Turbo" lived inside a small fishbowl with the family beta fish, Dory.

But Turbo may have breathed his last, says Rachel Franklin. She noticed bubbles have stopped emerging from the tiny snail.

No matter, she said. Once it dies, the shell will be a part of Paul's scrapbook.