Teen suffers minor injuries from shark bite on Galveston's west end

GALVESTON, TX (KTRK) -- It didn't send her to an emergency room or require stitches, but a 14-year-old Houston girl has a shark story to tell and the still-visible imprint on her shoulder proves it.

Her name is Mikaela. This weekend, she and her family were at a beach home on Galveston's west beach.

After an afternoon of tanning, Mikaela wanted to cool off. She walked into waist-deep water and kneeled down. What happened next is the stuff of nightmares.

Mikaela says she heard the prelude to the chomp. "Just like in the movies, when a shark opens its mouth," she recalled. The sound of it exhaling before it bites.

Oddly enough, she says it felt like something hit her shoulder. There was no pain, and she says she never saw the shark.

Nevertheless, Mikaela had a feeling she had some kind of close encounter, so she made it to shore as quickly as she could, and told her mother that she thought she had been bitten by a shark.

When her mother moved her daughter's hair from her shoulders, she saw blood. The two ran back to the beach house, where a physician friend was also spending the day.

No stiches were required. It was a superficial wound that was cleaned, and today is healing nicely. Mikaela didn't require any emergency room visit.

It is a reminder that beneath the waves, there is marine life -- some of it with teeth.

Watch ABC-13 Eyewitness News today at 4pm and 6pm, and hear one very lucky teenager's story.