Raccoon released into a packed Kentucky restaurant in misguided plot for revenge

This masked bandit didn’t come to steal – he came to bite. 

A Kentucky man let loose a terrified raccoon into a bar out of revenge for being turned away by the bartender, according to a witness. 

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 Murray, Ky, on June 6, according to a police press release and employees. 

Mason, who is known to locals as Cowboy Cody, lives alone on a nearby farm and is known to employees at area bars as someone who is likely to cause trouble, employees said. 

Mary Hafner, 37, who has tended bar at The Big Apple for five years, told The Post that was the case when Mason came in Friday night. She could tell the man she called Cowboy Cody had already been drinking

Cowboy Cody always liked her, Hafner said, and thought she could convince him to leave without a scene.

“I came out from around the bar and asked him nicely to leave,” said Hafner, who had banned him in the winter after the mule incident. “He said to me, ‘oh I see how it is, they sent a pretty face out here to distract me.’”

Initially, Mason complied and he left 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 said.

“Apparently he had trapped a raccoon earlier in the day on his farm and he had been carrying it around with him,” Hafner said. “I’m a bartender, so you know I’ve seen some crazy stuff in my time. But nothing like this.”

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 he handle the raccoon, but another employee didn’t listen and tried to snatch the raccoon by his tail. It bit him, she said, and he had to get rabies shots. 

So Hafner took over. She calmly grabbed a towel, cornered him, and cradled him outside where he scampered off, she 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 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 a few days later on Dec. 9, according to police. 

“I’m no city slicker,” Hafner said. “I’m a Kentucky girl. I had no problem catching him.”

Mason refused to leave his car when officers pulled him over later that night after releasing the raccoon, police said, nor did he roll down his windows when asked so that the officers could question him, according to the release.

Eventually, cops placed him under arrest, according to the release. 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.