Jury Hears Girl Tell of Attack by Cougar : Lawsuit: She recalls mother’s screams as big cat dragged her into thorny bushes that cut her knees. Family says Orange County was negligent in not warning public of danger.

Laura Small, the girl mauled by a mountain lion at an Orange County park five years ago when she was 5 years old, testified Wednesday that she remembers wading in a stream and searching for tadpoles with her mother when an animal that looked like “a big dog” suddenly sprang from a bush and attacked her.

The 10-year-old El Toro girl, who is at the center of a negligence lawsuit filed by her parents against Orange County, could recall only fragments of the rare mountain lion attack on March 23, 1986, that partially paralyzed her right arm and leg, blinded her in one eye and caused numerous other physical and emotional scars.

Jurors watched intently as Laura, dressed in a flowered blouse and black pants, limped up to the witness stand. She was ushered into the courtroom through the judge’s chambers so she could avoid the crush of photographers and television crews waiting for her in the hallway.

The Smalls’ attorney, Wylie A. Aitken, contends that county and park officials were negligent because they knew about the dangers of mountain lions in the Ronald W. Caspers Wilderness Park--a county park--before the mauling and did nothing to warn the public.

Calmly responding to questions from attorneys, Laura told the jury that seconds before the attack she “heard some rustling from a bush” behind her. When the mountain lion grabbed her by the head in its powerful jaws, Laura said she remembers her mother screaming and the cougar dragging her into the brush and over some thorny bushes that cut her knees.

She said she has no memory of her rescue by a hiker who grabbed a stick and poked at the mountain lion until it released her. But she remembers her mother and father carrying her back to the park’s visitor center for help and “talking about how my face was all torn to pieces.”

Laura also testified about how she has coped with her disabilities since the attack. She has trouble with doing simple things, such as tying shoelaces or picking up small objects, she said.

Once right-handed, her partial paralysis has forced her to learn to use her left hand to accomplish most tasks, Laura said.

And although she does well academically at Olivewood Elementary School in El Toro, Laura said she is occasionally the brunt of her schoolmates’ cruel jokes. She said she has trouble “making friends. Everyone makes fun of me and calls me cat girl and things like that.”

Five years and 15 surgeries after the attack, details of the incident are being presented to jurors in Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana. The jury will decide if anyone was to blame for the incident.

After Laura testified, Aitken told reporters that the case was “not about sympathy, it’s about responsibility. (The county) had an opportunity to protect the public and didn’t.”

County officials, however, have denied any wrongdoing.

Defense attorney Barry Allen has repeatedly said that “the county cannot be held responsible for a wild mountain lion.”

He admitted that county officials were investigating several sightings of mountain lions, but that the conventional wisdom at the time of the attack was that the large cats “were shy and secretive animals that had a healthy aversion to humans.” Never, he said, had a mountain lion been known to attack a human in Southern California.

Earlier in the 3-week-old trial, however, two county park rangers testified that they had become concerned enough about the “unusual” sightings to contact state authorities to see what they should do.

An official with the state Department of Fish and Game told a park ranger that they should warn the public and “discourage human-mountain lion contact,” the state and county rangers testified.

Also on Wednesday, Laura’s mother, Susan Mattern-Small, testified that until last year she was repeatedly haunted by images of her daughter’s attack “replaying like a videotape in my mind.”

“The slightest thing would trigger it,” she said. “The sound of a dripping faucet would remind me of the stream there.”

During part of her testimony, Mattern-Small narrated parts of a home video collection of Laura before and after the attack. At one point, Laura’s is seen struggling to put on her shoes.

“We keep encouraging her to do all these things,” the mother said.

Aitken, who commented on Laura’s positive attitude, asked Mattern-Small if her daughter had an “overly optimistic” opinion of her potential recovery.

“I think so,” Mattern-Small said.