In this classic Khmer folktale, a hungry tiger tries to imitate a fish eagle and ends up trapped by his own shame, a loose‑tongued man, and one very clever hare who knows exactly how to turn fear into a weapon.

The tiger had been walking for a long time when the story opens.
Not hunting – just walking, with the dull determination of an animal that has been hungry too many days in a row and no longer knows where to look.

By the time he pushed through the last line of scrub and came out onto the bank of a pond, he was exhausted. He stopped, breathing hard. Across the water, a fish eagle sat on a high branch, calling in its harsh, metallic voice, the sound dropping down to the surface of the pond and breaking apart there.

The tiger watched.

From time to time the eagle fell silent and its body became very still. Only the eyes moved, fixed on the skin of the water. When a fish rose carelessly near the surface, the bird launched itself, folded the air beneath its wings, and in one clean movement came up again with a silver shape thrashing in its claws. It flew back to its perch and began to eat.

The tiger felt something close to outrage.

“So that’s all it takes?” he thought. “Sit in the shade, cry a little, stare at the water, and the food comes to you. One leap, and you dine. Look at me – walking until my legs shake, and still nothing. Clearly, I’ve been doing this the wrong way. Better to live like the fish eagle.”

Once this thought lodged in him, he could not shake it loose. He turned away from the pond and went in search of a place of his own – a quiet lake with plenty of fish, a tree with a branch that reached out over the water, a ready‑made stage on which to perform his new life.

He found such a place at last: still water, ringed with tall trees, one of them leaning just enough so that a heavy animal could stretch out over the surface. What the tiger did not know was that a man had already been there earlier that morning, setting lines across the water. When he had finished, the man had climbed a tree to watch, hidden in the leaves.

The tiger circled the shore, chose a tree and clambered up, slowly and clumsily, until he reached a branch that jutted out above the pond. He settled himself, cleared his throat and attempted to imitate the eagle’s call.

The sound that came out was neither convincing nor reassuring.

Up in the tree, the man froze, astonished. Tigers did not usually sit over water, pretending to be birds. But curiosity is a stubborn thing. He kept still and watched.

For a time, nothing happened. The tiger stared at the pond with the intense seriousness of a bad actor who believes in his role. Eventually a fish appeared, turning lazily near the surface. The tiger did not wait. He launched himself off the branch in an explosion of muscle and fur and landed not on the fish but in the pond itself, sending up a wall of water and mud.

The man burst out laughing.

“You’re going to drown yourself, you fool!” he called down, unable to restrain his voice.

The tiger surfaced, sputtering, and looked up. He saw the man, heard the laughter, and felt a burn of shame more painful than his bruised ribs.

“Only one man saw me,” he thought. “But one mouth is enough. He will go home, he will talk, and by tomorrow every creature in the forest will know that the tiger tried to become a fish eagle and fell into the water. I’ll never hear the end of it. I must stop his tongue.”

He spoke as humbly as he could.

“Good man,” he said, “you have seen me make a fool of myself. I tried to catch fish like the eagle and nearly drowned. I am ashamed. I beg you, do not speak of this to anyone. If you keep my secret, I will reward you.”

“Reward me how?” the man asked. Now that he saw the tiger pleading, his fear had shifted into bargaining.

“I will hunt for you,” the tiger said. “Every morning I will bring you meat – whatever I can catch. You will not need to set lines or traps. Only come here and collect what I offer.”

The man considered. It was an excellent bargain.

“Very well,” he said. “I’ll keep quiet.”

He climbed down from the tree and went home.

The next morning, he came back to the pond. The tiger was waiting with a carcass at his feet. The man took it and left without a word. The arrangement continued: one day pig, the next day deer, another day some other beast. The man’s house filled with meat. His wife cooked stews and curries, dried strips in the sun, salted what they could not eat.

After a while, she began to wonder.

“Tell me honestly,” she said one evening, when the meal was done and the house smelled of roasted fat. “How is it that you bring home fresh meat every single day? Yesterday wild pig, before that a deer, before that something else again. What have you done? Whom have you found?”

“I’ve been setting very good traps,” he replied.

“What kind of traps never fail?” she asked. “There is no such trap. Don’t treat me like a child. I’m your wife. Tell me.”

The man hesitated, then decided that silence was unnecessary. After all, she was only one person; surely the tiger would never know. So he told her everything, from the eagle at the first pond to the tiger’s promise at the second.

His wife listened in disbelief, then laughter, then a slow unease. At the end she said nothing. The story lay between them like a live coal.

The next morning, the man went back to the lake as usual. The tiger was already there. This time, there was no carcass on the ground.

“You came,” the tiger said. “Good. I have been waiting. Today I will eat you.”

The man’s legs weakened.

“Why?” he asked, though he knew the answer.

“When I begged you to keep your mouth shut,” the tiger said, “you agreed. In return, I hunted for you every day. Now you have used that mouth to tell my shame to someone else. A promise is a rope: once cut, it is no use. I cannot trust you. So I will eat you instead.”

The man saw that he had no argument. He had broken his word. All he could do was plead for time.

“If you must kill me, then kill me,” he said. “I will not complain. But let me go home once to see my wife, to tell her what will happen. Then I’ll come back.”

The tiger stared at him for a long moment, then nodded.

“Go, then,” he said. “But be quick. I am already hungry. If you do not return, I will come to your house and eat both of you. People who cannot keep a promise are not worth sparing.”

The man went home with the heaviness of someone walking to his own funeral. He told his wife what he had done and what was coming. She wept, cursed his loose tongue, cursed her own curiosity, cursed the tiger, the fish eagle, the whole arrangement.

None of it changed the fact that the tiger would be waiting.

In the end, the man left his house again, alone, tears in his eyes. On the path he met a hare who stopped, blocking the way.

“Where are you going, crying like that?” the hare asked. “What has happened?”

The man told the story once more, this time stripped of pride. At the end, he said:

“There is nothing to be done. I spoke, and now I must die.”

The hare listened without interrupting, then said:

“If that’s all, it can be managed. Go and find me a good bunch of bananas.”

The man stared, then ran. In a short time he was back, carrying a heavy, ripe cluster. He laid it reverently at the hare’s feet.

“Here,” he said. “If you can save my life, take these as a small offering.”

The hare accepted the bananas as if accepting a formal fee.

“Come with me,” he said. “Let’s go and meet your tiger.”

He led the man to a rocky outcrop near the path, climbed up and sat on top where he could see the road clearly. The man stayed below, hidden.

Back at the lake, the tiger waited until he was certain the man was not coming. Rage and hunger rose together in him. He set off along the path toward the man’s house, planning now to eat not one person but two.

He had not gone far when he saw the rock where the hare sat.

The man saw him first.

“He’s coming,” he whispered.

“Quiet,” said the hare. “Let him come closer.”

He took a banana, peeled it calmly and held it between his teeth. When the tiger drew near, the hare bit down hard so that the sound echoed against the stone, and then he cried out in a voice that did not sound like it could have come from such a small body:

“Delicious! I’ve eaten five tigers already and I’m still not full. Their bones crunch like little twigs in my teeth. Ah, that makes six!”

The tiger stopped dead. He had been ready to kill an unarmed man; he was not ready to hear someone boasting of having eaten five tigers as if they were snacks. His fur stood on end.

He turned and ran.

He did not stop until he reached a tree where a monkey was sitting. The monkey watched the tiger’s headlong flight with interest.

“Brother Tiger,” he called, “what are you running from?”

The tiger gasped out the story: the huge, unseen creature that claimed to have eaten five tigers without effort and was looking forward to more.

“Did you see it?” the monkey asked.

“No,” the tiger admitted. “I only heard its voice from behind a big rock.”

The monkey thought for a moment.

“That sounds like my friend the hare,” he said. “He likes to sit on rocks and shout. Are you sure it wasn’t him?”

“It can’t be,” the tiger said. “A hare can’t eat tigers.”

“You’re a tiger,” the monkey replied. “Yet I have just seen you run away from a voice. Why should the impossible stop there? In any case, if you’re so convinced, let’s go back and look. I’ll come with you.”

The tiger hesitated.

“You’ll just climb a tree and leave me there,” he said.

“If you don’t trust me,” said the monkey, “then we’ll tie our tails together. If I run, you run. If you run, I run. Fair?”

The tiger, who was more afraid of the unknown voice than of knots, agreed. They tied their tails together and set off toward the rock.

From his vantage point, the hare watched them come: the tiger in front, the monkey behind, their tails bound into one rope.

“They’re back,” the man whispered. “And the tiger has brought a monkey with him.”

“Good,” said the hare. “Two visitors.”

He peeled another banana and held it ready. When the pair came close, the monkey whispered:

“Where is this terrible creature?”

“Behind that rock,” the tiger replied. “That’s where the voice came from.”

At that exact moment, the hare clamped down on the banana and shouted:

“Ah! So the debtor has brought payment at last! Monkey, you’ve owed me for four, five years now – and today you arrive with a tiger to settle the debt. Excellent. What a generous offering!”

The monkey understood at once what was happening. The tiger understood something else.

“So it’s true,” the tiger thought in panic. “The monkey has led me here to pay his old debt with my life.”

Fear overruled pride. He bolted.

The monkey screamed and tried to pull the other way, but the knot held. The tiger’s terror gave him a strength that no argument could stop. He tore down the path, dragging the monkey behind him. The smaller animal slammed against tree trunks, rocks, anything in the way, until at last he lay still, his body broken, his debt – in the cruel logic of the tale – paid.

The hare watched them disappear, then turned to the man.

“You’re safe now,” he said. “Go home. Next time, choose your words more carefully.”

The story ends, as many Khmer stories do, with a proverb. Here it is in plain language:

A covered mouth keeps the jar whole.
Once the jar is cracked, everything leaks out.

Or, put differently: a secret kept is a life preserved; a secret betrayed is a crack you cannot mend.

(You can read the original Khmer version of this tale on Wikisource here.)