Geese have keen hearing and their eyes are better than ours. Not only can they see further, they see more, because they can see ultraviolet light. They are fiercely territorial and become agitated by intruders, expressing their displeasure with loud voices.

Because of these qualities, geese make excellent guardians. They’ve had this reputation since antiquity. Most famously, when belligerent Gauls advanced into Rome in the early 4th century BC, their attempt to seize the Capitoline Hill in darkness was squawked away by the watchful geese at the Temple of Juno Moneta.

More recently, they’ve been used to guard farms, army bases, police stations, at least one home in Venice, California, and, sometime in the 1980s, a water facility somewhere on the Charles River. That’s how the legend goes, anyway.