This masked bandit didn’t come to steal – he came to bite.
A Kentucky man known as “Cowboy Cody” let loose a terrified raccoon in a bar out of revenge for being turned away from the establishment Friday night, according to police and a bartender who witnessed the incident.
Police arrested Jonathan Mason, 40, on a slew of charges including assault after he released a raccoon into The Big Apple Grill and Bar in the city of Murray, according to a police press release.
“Apparently he had trapped a raccoon earlier in the day on his farm and he had been carrying it around with him,” a restaurant bartender, Mary Hafner, told The Post.
“I’m a bartender, so you know I’ve seen some crazy stuff in my time. But nothing like this.”
Mason, dubbed “Cowboy Cody” by locals, lives alone on a nearby farm and has caused trouble in the past at local bars, employees told The Post.
Hafner, 37, who has worked at The Big Apple for five years, said Mason was already drinking when she encountered him Friday night. The bar had previously banned him over a drunken mule incident.
Mason always liked her, Hafner said, and she thought she could convince him to leave without causing a scene.
“I came out from around the bar and asked him nicely to leave,” said Hafner. “He said to me, ‘oh I see how it is, they sent a pretty face out here to distract me.’”
Initially, Mason complied without complaint.
“At first I was like whew, I defused a big issue,” she said.
But moments later he returned – armed with a raccoon, Hafner claimed.
She said the raccoon waddled into the crowded restaurant as customers looked on in confusion.
“It was more scared than anything,” she said of the raccoon. “It was pretty upsetting for him.”
Hafner told her fellow employees to let her handle the raccoon, but another employee didn’t listen and tried to snatch the furry fiend by his tail. It bit him, she said, and he had to get rabies shots.
A video shows the employee crawling on the floor chasing after the raccoon as he weaves his way through tables and chairs.
The raccoon then bites the worker on his hand as the wild animal makes a shrieking growl.
But Hafner was able to lure the critter onto a chair where she casually wraps him in a towel and heads for the exit.
“I’m no city slicker,” Hafner said. “I’m a Kentucky girl. I had no problem catching him.”
The worker who was bitten had to get rabies shots, Hafner said.
This was not the first time Mason was involved in an animal-related crime.
Last winter, Mason was arrested – twice – for leading cops on a wild, drunken chase through city streets on a mule. Big Apple employees had to call the police on Mason when he allegedly beat the animal with a whip in the parking lot.
Mason led police on a drunken chase on the mule on the night of Dec. 7, and then did it again on Dec. 9, according to police.
Mason refused to leave his car when officers pulled him over later that night after releasing the raccoon, police said,
He also wouldn’t roll down his windows so that the officers could question him, according to the release.
Eventually, cops placed him under arrest.
Mason was booked into the Calloway County Jail and is facing charges of third-degree criminal trespass, second-degree assault, resisting arrest and failure to maintain insurance.
