Planned Rodenthood or Not In My Liberal Backyard – Leave it to those wacky liberals in Berkeley, California to come up with innovative solutions to deal with their wild raccoon problem. The LA Times reports that the Berkeley City Council will vote next month on an ordinance to neuter wild raccoons [requires registration].

Frustrated residents of woodsy Berkeley are at wits' end over a raccoon invasion. They've tried scaring them. They've tried catching them. And now they want to make it really personal--they want to neuter them.

In what officials say could be the first ordinance of its kind in the nation, Berkeley city councilwoman Linda Maio wants captured raccoons to be sterilized before being let back into the community.

“Of course people are going to say, 'Oh, this is liberal, crazy Berkeley at it again,' " Maio said. "But I'd like to ask those people what the alternatives are. Should we all just go out with our shotguns and start shooting them?"

There are better solutions than the one proposed by progressive liberal Maio:

1) Include a ‘Raccoon Acceptance' course in its Diversity Training program for Berkeley employees and residents
2) Build a government-funded raccoon abortion clinic so that they can exercise their reproductive rights
3) Provide same-sex partner benefits to homosexual raccoons
4) Classify raccoons as “disadvantaged minorities” and enroll them as students in the University of California at Berkeley
5) Use raccoons instead of paper coffee cup sleeves at all Berkeley coffee houses

My father-in-law had his own raccoon problem a few years ago. He solved it by trapping the offending creature and then using it as an ingredient in his homemade soup.