A live snail hatched inside a Calif. boy's elbow abscess. He nicknamed it 'Turbo.'

File photo of a sea snail. File photo of a sea snail. Photo: Giordano Cipriani/Getty Images Photo: Giordano Cipriani/Getty Images Image 1 of / 22 Caption Close A live snail hatched inside a Calif. boy's elbow abscess. He nicknamed it 'Turbo.' 1 / 22 Back to Gallery

An 11-year-old boy in Los Angeles discovered a snail had been living inside of his elbow for a whole week.

According to a recent article published in the medical journal BMJ Case, the boy cut his elbow open while playing in a tide pool at a Southern California beach. The boy's family cleaned his wound after the incident, but noticed that the wound appeared to be getting worse after a week.

The family brought the boy to a hospital where he was treated by Dr. Albert Khait, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Loma Linda University in Los Angeles and the author of the BMJ Case article.

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Khait states that he and his colleagues diagnosed the boy with a skin abscess, and proceeded to lance and drain the pus from the wound.

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While examining the pus, Khait and his colleagues stumbled upon a "hard object" measuring under .02 inches in diameter.

The object turned out to be a live sea snail, later identified as a heckered periwinkle marine snail.

Khait said he and his colleagues did not realize that the snail was alive when they found it.

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The doctors believe when the boy picked up the scrape, he somehow got the snail's egg embedded in his elbow, meaning that the critter hatched inside of the boy.

"The unique characteristics of this intertidal mollusk appear to have enabled it to survive in the subcutaneous tissue for a week, despite the hostile environment of a skin abscess," Khait wrote.

Khait also reported that the boy took the snail home as a pet and named it "Turbo," but Turbo died after one day of living outside of the boy's elbow.