The Dragon Has 2 Tales, Zoo’s and Celebrity Pair’s

Komodo dragon bites man. Man and his movie-star wife bite back.

For the last two weeks, since the 7-foot lizard at the Los Angeles Zoo took a bite out of Sharon Stone’s husband, the reptile and its keepers have been grappling with the Hollywood spin machine: It has portrayed the bitten Phil Bronstein, executive editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, as swashbuckling enough to pry with his bare hands the poisonous animal off his toe. It has cast his wife as the only one there who was quick-thinking enough to help.

But the zoo’s accident report offers a somewhat different account of the moment when the zoo’s 4-year-old, 55-pound lizard named Komo lunged for Bronstein:

“The next thing we saw was Phil screaming with the Komodo attached to his foot,” said Genie Vasels, an official from the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Assn., the fund-raising arm of the zoo, in her written account.

Stone immediately fashioned a tourniquet out of her husband’s sock and tied it around his bleeding toe. Then she stepped outside the reptile house to make cell phone calls to relatives, according to the report.

“She was hysterical,” Vasels wrote. “I tried to calm her down. She said that the bite was bad, down to the bone.”

Vasels said that after the incident she ran to call zoo security and general curator Michael Dee called for an ambulance. As Bronstein lay on the ground outside the Komodo’s exhibit, zoo staffers got ice and cold packs as well as a towel to place under Bronstein’s head.

“He looked scared and pale,” Vasels said of Bronstein. “I apologized to Phil. He kept shaking his head saying, ‘This is not your fault, it is not the zoo’s fault. I made the choice to go into the exhibit.’ ”

The zoo routinely requires eyewitness reports on animal mishaps. This one, requested by The Times, happens to offer counterspin to the celebrity couple’s behind-the-scenes visit to the zoo.

Stone, who initially said she did not blame zoo officials, this week publicly denounced them as “irresponsible” for letting her husband into the Komodo’s enclosure. She has said the reptile-keeper was so stunned after the incident that he was unable to help. And according to a June 14 account in Bronstein’s own paper, “Instinctively, Bronstein slammed his foot down, anchoring the dragon’s lower jaw to the ground. . . . Bronstein pried the dragon’s upper jaw off his foot, hobbled away and dived for the door.”

Both Vasels and Dee, who were accompanying Bronstein and Stone on their tour, say it was reptile-keeper Jay Kilgore who got the animal disengaged from Bronstein’s foot.

“Komo without warning bit Phil on his left foot and held on,” Kilgore wrote in his own detailed account. “I grabbed Komo by his neck and yelled at him. He let go after an estimated one or two seconds. I pulled Komo away from Phil and yelled at Phil to get out of the exhibit. After a delay of perhaps 10 to 15 seconds Phil stepped out of the exhibit. I had been repeatedly yelling at Phil to get out.”

Told that Stone’s and Bronstein’s account of the aftermath differed from the zoo’s, Pat Kingsley, Stone’s publicist, said, “It’s a he-said, he-said thing.” She has no trouble believing Bronstein. “He was a war correspondent. He’s used to difficult situations.”

Bronstein is still recuperating in a cast at the couple’s house in Los Angeles and taking a heavy regimen of antibiotics. A Komodo’s bite can be deadly if not treated. The editor may return to work in San Francisco next week, Chronicle spokesman Joe Brown said.

Zoo Director Manuel Mollinedo has said that zoo staffers showed poor judgment in allowing Bronstein into the exhibit. The zoo has had two Komodos since they were foot-long, year-old infants. Komo had been gentle enough for visitors. As recently as October a young woman cuddled with the animal without incident.

“I was not aware that he was going to be allowed into the exhibit, but I take responsibility,” Mollinedo said. “I just made the assumption we had stopped doing that.”

It was Kilgore who entered the exhibit and then--with curator Dee’s approval--invited Bronstein to follow. “As he was stepping in, I noticed he was wearing white shoes and white socks,” Kilgore wrote. “I asked Phil to step out of the exhibit because I knew Komo was excited by white objects. (They look like the rats he eats.)”

The accident report suggests that the attack was not entirely without warning. Vasels says the animal had made a “mini-lunge” at Bronstein’s shoes. Bronstein, according to Kilgore, asked if he could take off his shoes and socks and go in barefoot.

“I said OK because I had never known the animal to be aggressive or excited by human skin,” Kilgore said. “Komo often smells and uses his tongue on my arms and hands. He smells my work boots but never shows any attempt to bite.”

Bronstein knelt on one side of the Komodo with Kilgore on the other. Stone was taking pictures when the Komodo attacked.

The zoo no longer allows in-house visits with either of the Komodos. Bronstein and Stone have not indicated they will sue the zoo, according to publicist Kingsley. “I think they just want it to go away.” On that, the zoo and the couple agree.