A Malaysian woman saved her husband’s life by using a soup ladel to scare away a tiger that was attacking him.

Tambun Gediu was hunting squirels with his blowpipe when he realised a tiger was tracking him.

‘I tried to escape by climbing up a tree, but the tiger caught up with me and dragged me down,” Gediu told the News Strait Times.

‘I was terrified and I used all my strength to punch the animal in the face, but it would not budge.’

Tambun told the newspaper 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.

When she saw the tiger, she didn’t hesitate and charged at the large cat, screaming at the top of her lungs and smashing it around the head with the ladle until it ran off.

Gediun suffered deep cuts to his head, face, neck and knees, and 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.