Early each morning — almost exactly as they have been doing for hundreds of years — nearly 30,000 toddy tappers across the state risk their lives to clamber up coconut trees. Sometimes they walk from treetop to treetop on crude tightropes in search of budding flower stalks. They slice these stalks open and use terracotta pots to catch the milky liquid that oozes out, which almost immediately begins to ferment, thanks to natural yeasts in the air.