Wife with soup ladle foils tiger attack on husband

A woman used a wooden soup ladle to save her husband from attack by a tiger in a Malaysian jungle. Han Besau charged towards the animal screaming as she brandished the 'weapon' while it clawed at 60-year-old Tambun Gediu. The 55-year-old woman used the spoon to beat the animal on the head - and remarkably it ran away. 'It would have clawed me to death if my wife had not arrived,' Tambun said as he recovered in hospital after an operation on lacerations to his face and legs.

Residents in the couple's village in Kg Sungai Tiang, 160 miles north of Kuala Lumpur, are hailing Han Besau as a hero who saved her husband from certain death. Tambun said that he was hunting squirrels for the family's evening meal when he came face to face with the tiger. 'I was trailing a squirrel and crouched to shoot it with my blowpipe when I saw the tiger,' he said. 'That's when I realised that I was being trailed. I tried to escape by climbing up a tree, but the tiger caught up with me and dragged me down.



'I was terrified and I used all my strength to punch the animal in the face, but it would not budge.',Tambun said that he wrestled with the tiger to try to keep its jaws away from him, but if his wife had not arrived with the soup ladle he would have been clawed to death. His wife told villagers that she was alerted to her husband's plight when she heard the tiger's roar. Realising it was coming from the area where her husband was hunting for squirrels she grabbed the nearest 'weapon' - the wooden ladle - and rushed into the nearby forest.

Staring in horror at the sight of her husband fighting desperately to prevent the tiger tearing him to pieces, she didn't hesitate and charged at the animal, yelling at the top of her voice and bashing its head with the ladle until it ran off. Tambun, who suffered deep lacerations on his head, face, neck and knees, had to wait more than 10 hours before he could be taken to hospital in the nearest town, Gerik, because rescuers had difficulty reaching his remote village. Miss Shabrina Mohammad Shariff, an official from the Department of Wildlife and National Parks, said she would help Tambun receive financial help from a special fund known as the Wild Animal Attack Relief Fund.