Giant Lizard Bites Stone's Hubby
June 11 -- It sounds like bad reality TV — When Animals Attack the Otherwise Inconsequential Spouses of Famous Folks — but it became a waking nightmare for Phil Bronstein on Saturday. That's when the executive editor of the San Francisco Chronicle was bitten by a Komodo dragon at the Los Angeles Zoo.
Bronstein, for those of you not well-versed in the six degees of showbiz interrelations, is married to actress Sharon Stone (who starred in Sphere with Dustin Hoffman, who played an attorney in Sleepers with Kevin Bacon).
According to the Chronicle, the celebrity spouse was taken to an L.A. hospital following his animal encounter, where surgery was required to reattach severed tendons in one of his big toes.
Stone told the paper that the zoo trip had begun as a surprise early Father's Day gift for Bronstein, who apparently has a longstanding interest in Komodo dragons. Stone reportedly tagged along but waited outside the zoo's Komodo enclosure while her husband accompanied a zookeeper on a behind-the-scenes inspection tour.
Bronstein had removed his white sneakers before entering the cage — a precaution, as irony would have it, against the chance of his feet being mistaken for an appetizer by the dragons, which are fed white mice. It was a 4-year-old, characteristically mild-tempered dragon that attempted to make a meal of Bronstein's toe.
Bronstein reportedly rescued himself by seizing and prying apart the ravening reptile's jaws, before beating a hasty retreat through the cage's small feeding door.
Komodo dragons, which are indigenous to Indonesia, are the largest lizards on the planet. They can be nearly a dozen feet in length and weigh as much as 350 pounds.
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