The brave palm tree trimmer

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Promise me you will enlarge this photo (by clicking once, and then once again). 

Isn't this guy awesome?!  He was so brave.
He was up in the crown of a palm tree trimming the fronds and after he climbed down, he agreed to show me those tree-climbing spikes strapped to his legs. 
Awesome, right?
Go on, click on the picture.  Look at that smile! 
How often do you see a man doing a dangerous job but enjoying it and taking pride in good work?!

It must be hard enough to climb and keep your balance even  without the heavy chainsaw hanging from your belt. 
At least here, the man had a cinch holding him to the tree so he would have both hands free to saw.

But while he was coming down, he took off the cinch. 
Oi veh!  I was holding my breath. Please don't fall! 
His two assistants on the ground asked me "Mafchid?" --Does it look scary to you?
Oh yeah.

Actually it was my first time to see a palm tree trimmer.
I had only seen pictures of this in Maryanne's blog, in Egypt, and there the man was cutting with an axe. 
Click on her label "palm" to read all the many ways palm fiber and wood is used in Egypt.

If you enlarge this photo too, you can see all the drooping dead branches that needed to be trimmed. 
The row of stately palm trees there at the entrance to Jerusalem's Hadassah Ein Kerem medical center looked a lot more stately after the trimmer's good treatment.

I thanked him profusely and said "Allah yisa'adek" which I hope is the proper Arabic for what I meant:  May God help you in this challenging work and always keep you safe.
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