an illustration of a variant of the tale
English: Photo description: This is how I tell this story to 6 year olds: A tiger once fell into a trap, and the trap was the hole in the ground. Now normally tigers are good climbers and jumpers, but this hole was so steep-sided, so smooth that try as he might the Tiger couldn’t get out. And there he waited, until a boy came along. As the boy passed by the tiger shouted, “Help me! Help me! Let me out!” The boy couldn’t see where the voice was coming from. “Help me! Help me! Let me out!” And the boy saw that there was a hole in the ground, and he looked down into the hole. Down in the hole was a tiger. “Can you help me out of here, please!” said the tiger. And the boy thought “I’m not sure I should… aren’t tigers quite dangerous? Don’t they eat little boys?” “If you let me out of here I won’t eat you because you will have saved me!” Well the boy was a kind boy and he went and he got a long branch off a tree. He dragged that long branch over to the hole and he pushed the long branch down into the hole, and when the long branch reached the bottom the tiger was able to scramble up. When it got out it looked at the boy and it said, “Now I’m going to eat you!” “Huh? But... you said… you said you wouldn’t eat me!” “Huh! I just said that to get out. But now I’m going to eat you. That’s what tigers do.” It put a big paw on the boy, and it showed all its teeth. The boy said, “That’s not fair!” “Huh! Fair?” said the Tiger, “Don’t talk to me about ‘fair’! You human beings, you’re not fair.” “Yes we are,” said the boy, “We do things fairly.” “Huh! Let’s ask the first animal we see as we walk along this path here,” said the tiger. “OK,” said the boy. He was pleased that he wasn’t being eaten actually. So they walked along the path and soon they saw a cow, an old cow in a field. They said, “Cow, old cow, please tell us. We want to know, are human beings fair?” The old cow said, “Definitely not! I have given my milk all of my life to people. They have taken my milk, and now that I am old they want to kill me and eat my meat. Is that fair?” The boy was worried. “See!” said the tiger, “human beings aren’t fair. Why should I be fair? I’m going to eat you.” “Wait… wait… wait!” said the boy, “Let’s ask something else…” He looked around, and there was a fig tree. The boy said, “Let’s ask the fig tree.” “OK,” said the tiger. “Fig tree,” they said, “We want to know, are people fair?” The fig tree laughed, “Huh! Huh! Huh! Fair! All my life they have taken away my fruit to eat. Now that I am old and don’t have many fruit, do you know what they want to do? They want to chop me down and burn the wood! Is that fair? I don’t think so!” The boy said, “Can we just ask one more?” The tiger said, “OK. Ask one more animal, the next one that comes along. And if he says that people are not fair then I am going to eat you.” So they walked along and they saw a monkey. The monkey stopped when it saw them. They said, “Monkey, we want to know, do you think people are fair or not?” “Why are you asking?” said the monkey. “Well, tiger wants to eat me. I think it’s not fair because I helped rescue him. But he says people aren’t fair so it’s all right.” “What do you mean ‘rescue him’?” said the monkey. “Well he was in a hole and I put a branch in and let him out.” “A hole?” “Yes, come and see.” So they walked back along to the hole. The monkey looked down into the hole. The tiger looked down, and the boy looked down. The monkey said “I don’t believe you. Tiger could jump out of that hole easily.” Tiger said, “I could not get out of that hole! It’s got straight, smooth sides. I couldn’t climb out of that hole. It’s a trap for tigers!” “You, the best of all climbers and jumpers, are you telling me you can’t get out of that hole there?” The monkey pulled the branch out of the hole. “I don’t believe you,” said the monkey. The tiger said, “Look, I’ll show you!” And the tiger jumped back into the hole.