Dragon Attack: Postmortem

By Stephen M. Silverman

06/20/2001 at 11:00 AM EDT

Funny as it may have seemed to others, last week's attack on San Francisco newspaper executive Phil Bronstein, 49, by a Komodo dragon at the L.A. Zoo was no laughing matter. Major surgery was required. And, says Bronstein's wife, actress Sharon Stone, 43, the victim is recovering slowly from nearly having his foot bitten off by the big lizard, whose cage a barefoot Bronstein happened to have been inhabiting at the time of the encounter. "He's going to have to make a really extraordinary effort at rehab," Stone told The Washington Post, adding that Bronstein faces "a long road just to learn to walk again." Describing the attack, which took place Father's Day weekend, Stone said that her husband had to pry open the lizard's jaws, remove his lacerated foot and then get the heck out of the cage through an opening in the pen. "Thank God he's a macho guy," said Stone. "He wouldn't have been able to save himself if he wasn't."