Anansi did not like Tiger, and Tiger did not like Anansi, because Anansi had amusing habit (for him) of getting in Tiger’s fur and raising all sorts of hell for the cat and Tiger had an amusing habit (again, for him) of stepping on Anansi whenever he damn well pleased. Neither were particularly grateful of the other’s treatment, and both wanted to best the other.

Plus, Tiger had all the stories. And Anansi wanted the stories. Tiger’s stories were vicious and boring but Anansi’s were clever. Stories were fun for Anansi, and he tells this one too.

One day, Anansi was stepped on, and he lay there for a day or two wishing he hadn’t been. But, as he lay in the dust like, well, a squashed spider, he had an idea. Several actually. Some of them were clever, others so much less so that even Tiger would be disappointed. Of course, Anansi wasn’t entirely concerned with Tiger’s opinion, more so with his own.

Tiger has a habit of walking the forest, both to avoid the hot sun and crush Anansi whenever he damn well pleased. Each day, he passes under one tree in particular, a towering acacia with branches spread wider than Eagle’s wings could even dream of, and Anansi finds this suitable for his idea. So he loops a couple of vines around one of the lower branches and a third around the highest branch in the tree. Beneath the tree, he digs a hole many Tigerlengths deep and fills it with the softest mud around. As is the case with Anansi, he tests the strength of his trap and dies in the sticky mud.

You found Anansi like that a lot in those days.
By the time he’s suitably recovered, Tiger has already passed the hole several times, laughing down at the body of his rival. Too sticky for you, eh? was one of his favorites. In any event, Tiger forgets to care about the hole and Anansi because he’s too busy squishing spiders. So it goes.

The dumb enemy is the best enemy, Anansi would like to say as he wove a canopy of silk and leaves and sticks and mud and whatever else to go over the hole, they don’t see it coming until it hits them and they might not know it did when it does.

Bird sees Anansi working beneath the tree and flutters down to watch. This is before Anansi put Bird in a pot and cooked him for dinner, obviously. Would’ve ended differently if it wasn’t. Bird wonders why Anansi has been working so, falling and weaving and splattering mud all over his… thing. It confuses him, says Bird.
Anansi laughs. It is a little project of mine, he says, and you may see it yourself one day. He’s already thinkin’ about the pit and pot for Bird.

Tiger walks by while the two talk, and he’s no particular friend of Bird’s either. So, Anansi is squashed again, Bird becomes a nice little snack for the cat, and Tiger is left both full and wondering what on earth the two had been doing. It didn’t matter to him.
Only, it would. Eventually.

Several days after Anansi had begun and died repeatedly, the cover lies on the pit and invisible to all but Anansi and Bird, who have seen it already. But not Tiger. Tiger is on his morning walk, squashing spiders left and right when he sees Anansi dangling from the acacia branch and fiddling with a vine. Tiger asks what his enemy is doing and Anansi just laughs. Tiger asks again and Anansi says he making a story. He says his story is about the cleverness of a spider trapping a cat.

Tiger isn’t as amused by the story as Anansi and steps onto the pit cover, trying to bite Anansi. He’s not the most accurate of cats and gets a mouthful of vine. Unlike his brain, Tiger’s teeth are pretty sharp. He slices right through the vine and it drops a rather heavy rock on the cover, breaking it and sending him into the pit.
Now it mattered to Tiger.

The mud in the pit is very sticky. Several dead Anansi bodies stick to Tiger’s fur as he struggles to lift his feet. Anansi leans over the edge of the pit and asks why Tiger would go and do something silly like that. Tiger just roars. He’s not one for small talk. Or any talk.
Tiger asks what Anansi wants and Anansi says, well, he wants stories because Tiger has the stories and stories are fun and he’ll let Tiger out if Tiger gives him the stories. And Tiger doesn’t want to give him the stories because he says they’re his and no one else’s, but Tiger also wants to get out of the muddy hole with a bunch of dead Anansi bodies stuck to his fur. So Tiger says, yes, I’ll give you the stories, just let me out.
Anansi goes to let Tiger out but Tiger like to lie and tries to climb out of the hole himself. Anansi’s smarter than Tiger and made the walls really slick, so Tiger slips and falls back into the mud and gets buried by some of the falling dirt and makes a ruckus. Anansi hears this and goes back to the hole and asks why Tiger would go and do something silly like that and asks for the stories again.

Tiger isn’t a spider and can’t just die and come back over and over again very fast so he has to say yes and that’s basically how Anansi got the stories to begin with. But Anansi’s also got a bit of a soft spot for the dumb ones and decides to let Tiger out of the hole by lowering another rock to him.

And Anansi’s pretty much as accurate as Tiger and not as big, so lowering a rock is more like dropping a boulder and even Tiger has a problem with getting a boulder dropped on him. The rock lands on his head and Tiger doesn’t move for a while. Anansi doesn’t actually care all that much and just leaves Tiger there, and that’s not helping Anansi and Tiger hate each other any less.

The spiders don’t really care either. They’re not getting squashed.

There’s a version where Anansi falls into the hole and gets squashed by Tiger before the rock falls, but it ends pretty much the same. It’s Anansi’s story, but he doesn’t always win.