HEIGHT OF STUPIDITY: Queens firefighters yesterday prepare to rescue a stranded David Fleischer, whose tree-trimming shortcomings left him up in the air. (Photos: Dennisthephoto.com)
HEIGHT OF STUPIDITY: Queens firefighters yesterday prepare to rescue a stranded David Fleischer, whose tree-trimming shortcomings left him up in the air. (
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A boneheaded tree trimmer climbed his way to the top of an overgrown maple in Queens yesterday, cutting limbs along the way — until he realized he had no way down.
Red-faced David Fleischer, 21, of Brooklyn, had to be rescued by Queens firefighters in a ladder truck.
“He is a good boy, but he is learning,” said the man’s dad, Yisroel “Izzy” Fleischer, who runs the family’s landscaping business, Kensington Gardens Handiworks.
Yisroel Fleisher said the company, based in upstate Monticello, was hired to trim two maple trees and a cherry tree at a business on Linden Boulevard and 225th Street in Cambria Heights before chopping them down to clear the area for new construction.
David Fleischer made it 40 feet up before realizing his predicament — and drawing a small crowd of giggling bystanders.
“The people in the neighborhood were laughing because they could not believe it,’’ a witness said. “Everyone knows you start from the top and work down.”
Fleischer, of Flatbush, made matters worse by accidentally grazing his left index finger with his chain saw at some point.
He declined comment to The Post.
About 20 firefighters and other emergency medical workers responded to the 11:30 a.m. call about a man — not a cat — up a tree near the Nassau County border, and the tree trimmer was rescued by 12:30 p.m.
He went to a local hospital on his own and got three stitches in his finger.
Additional reporting by Dennis A. Clark and Antonio Antenucci