Ipoh, the capital of Perak is well-known as the birthplace of actress Michelle Yeoh, super-model Amber Chia, and former beauty queens Josephine Fonseka and her daughter Adrea.
Yet, during the days of the British, Ipoh was infamous for a man-eater! For a time, he killed man, woman or child – one every four of five days – over a 20-kilometre stretch of jungle from Ipoh to Kuala Kangsar. As the number of kills grew, so did the terror. Poison baits the man-eater left alone. Traps baited with a live goat had no attraction for him.
Only one man had looked on him in the eye and lived to tell the tale. He was an obstinate Chinese wood-cutter, who, armed with an oiled-paper umbrella, made a journey from the now Gunung Rapat Village after dark. He went a mile up a hill path to his kongsi house and almost bumped into the tiger which was crouched on the path before him.
The tiger roared! The wood-cutter opened his crackling umbrella, resting the bamboo ribs on the ground, and squatted behind it. Round came the tiger and round went the umbrella and in the end, the man-eater got tired of the strange obstacle and took off. So did the wood-cutter in a state of terror.
No one would have believed his story but the hill path was checked the next day. From the marks made by the ribs of the umbrella and the tiger’s pugs, it is believed that they must have circled 20 times. When the man-eater’s bag reached double figures, the British Government sent out 250 men from the Malay State Guides, then stationed in Taiping. For three weeks, the Sepoys – armed with rifles and bayonets – scoured the area around Ipoh. They "beat" the jungle, searched caves, climbed up hills but could not find the tiger. And on that very day, when they were returned to their barracks, the man-eater killed again.
Then the Sultan decided to take a hand. In Kuala Kangsar, he collected 14 elephants and 1,000 Malay warriors to go on a tiger drive. The elephants and Malay warriors went down river to the south but the drive was not successful and traps were set. Alas, a week later, the man-eater was finally caught in a trap camouflaged with creepers. He was shot through a crevice in the logs of the trap – an inglorious end for a man-eater which had been the terror of the district for two years.
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