Laura Braves Slow Healing From Mauling

Seven months after being mauled by a mountain lion while she hiked through a remote wilderness park with her parents, 5-year-old Laura Michele Small still has not fully recovered from the attack that left her unable to talk for more than a month and partly paralyzed.

Laura was attacked March 23 on a trail in Ronald W. Caspers Wilderness Park east of San Juan Capistrano. The cat crushed the left side of the girl’s skull, sending shards of bone into her brain. Her right arm and leg were paralyzed, her right eye was damaged and she had 50 cuts on her head and face.

Although she can walk and talk again, her healing has been slowed by apparent side effects from the antibiotics she took to ward off brain infection after the attack, said her mother, Susan Mattern-Small. Laura now suffers from a blood disease called hypoplastic anemia and may need bone marrow transfusions.

Testing for Donor

Just two days before young Justin Mellon of Huntington Beach was mauled by a cat at Caspers Park, Laura’s parents and brother were tested to see who would be the best donor in the event that Laura needs transfusions.

“It’s just been really hard,” Mattern-Small said in an interview Monday in her El Toro home. “Each time you think it’s starting to look better, you get hit by something else.”

Laura was attacked as she and her parents were walking along a stream near the end of a nature trail in the rustic park. Her brother and father had walked ahead on the trail, and Laura and her mother had waded into a shallow creek in search of tadpoles.

The girl walked onto the bank in a small clearing, and when her mother turned to look she saw the cat grab Laura by the head and run off. Another hiker heard Mattern-Small’s cries for help and clubbed the cat with a stick until it let go of the child.

Immediately after the attack, Laura underwent 12 hours of surgery, and she still faces at least two more major operations, her mother said. Her face is scarred, and she must wear a helmet when she plays to protect a soft area on her head. Next spring, a plate will be inserted to protect the exposed portion of her brain, which is now covered by a thin layer of skin.

“It’s getting better,” Mattern-Small said. “Her leg is coming back faster than her arm. Her hand she can’t really move. She’s left-handed now. For one month she couldn’t move her right arm or leg at all, though, so she’s come a long way.”

‘Macaroni and Cheese’

Laura also couldn’t talk for a month after the big cat grabbed her head in its jaws and dragged her into the brush that fills the park’s remote Bell Canyon. When her speech returned, her first words were “macaroni and cheese.”

Asked Monday what is most important to her now, she said, “Macaroni and cheese.”

Although she is frustrated by her paralysis--”It doesn’t work,” she said at one point, shaking her limp arm--she said she still wants to grow up to be a ballerina.

Her ballet instructor visits once a week, and on Monday the determined little girl was more than happy to show what she had learned. Grabbing the edge of the picnic table, Laura knit her scarred brow and proceeded to demonstrate second, third and fourth positions by moving her good left leg around her lifeless right.

“A lot of the qualities I didn’t admire in her before the attack have been the ones that have helped her through it,” Mattern-Small said. “She’s very determined. She always says exactly what she needs. This extreme determination pushes her to be the way she was before and does not let this stop her.

“She still wants to be a ballerina, and if there’s anyone who could do it she would have the determination. I think she’s done better than the rest of us. She has been accepting of what’s happened. She works real hard.”

Last Sunday’s attack on the Mellon boy, 6, was another setback for the Small family.

“I was very shocked that it had happened,” Mattern-Small said. “I had expected it though. My husband and I both were worried about this from the time of Laura’s attack--that it would happen to someone else--but we seemed to be the only ones who were concerned.”

She paused, thought hard and continued, “It should never have happened to Laura, and it should never have happened to this other boy.”