A rattled raccoon got stuck on a fourth-story Manhattan ledge for hours on Friday — drawing a large crowd of spectators before cops in a bucket lift were able to bring it down to safety.
Police arrived at 21 West 16th Street around 1:30 p.m., after the masked marauder apparently climbed up the drain pipe of the Chelsea building only to be too frightened to get back down.
“He looked like he was having a bad day, like he was hungover,” said resident Eric Jeng, who was working home when he heard a commotion outside his apartment.
At first, Jeng was confused by the growing group of people stopping to stare up at his building — and then he spotted the critter on the windowsill one floor below.
“Eventually the raccoon climbs up another level to my windowsill and gets stuck there right by my AC unit,” he recalled to The Post.
The weary animal could be seen pushing itself against Jeng’s window, trying to hide in plain sight from the officers and onlookers below.
“He looked tired,” Jeng noted. “He kept hiding his head away from everyone.”
The whole ordeal lasted nearly two hours, Jeng said, as cops with the NYPD’s Emergency Response Service Unit considered the best means to rescue the cowering raccoon.
“At some point I was like ‘what is going to happen?’” Jeng recalled.
Two officers lifted in a bucket loader were eventually able to lasso the bandit and bring it down safely — as the crowd of about 50 people clapped and cheered.
Jeng, who said he’d never before seen a raccoon in his neighborhood, noted how the cops were careful in their rescue operation, opting to use the lift and grab the animal from outside instead of pulling it in through a window.
“Theoretically we could have grabbed my raccoon from my other window but they were afraid … that if he got himself out of the lasso with his hands he would fall,” Jeng said.
“So the cops played it really safe and brought in a bridge truck and sent two guys up there and grabbed it pretty quickly one they had everything sorted out.”
He added: “It was a happy ending to the story.”
“It was just one of those New York moments.”