The Canada goose (Branta canadensis) is the only species in the GLMZ metropolitan zone that shows no measurable genetic, behavioral, or morphological change from baseline populations documented in the early 21st century. This is, from a biological standpoint, extraordinary. Every other vertebrate species in the urban environment has been affected — to greater or lesser degree — by the geneware contamination that pervades the regional water table, the atmospheric chemical load of the industrial zones, the electromagnetic saturation of BCI infrastructure, or the cascading secondary effects of all three. The geese are unchanged. They are exactly as aggressive, exactly as territorial, and exactly as utterly unafraid of anything as they were two hundred years ago.

This stability is statistically improbable. The GLMZ genetics lab has sequenced the genomes of GLMZ's resident goose population across three generations and found no novel insertions, no geneware markers, no evidence of environmental mutagenesis. The geese drink the same contaminated water as the bioluminescent pigeons. They eat from the same grounds as the enhanced rats. They share the lakefront with the hybridized fish. And they are unmodified. The working hypothesis — and the genetics lab emphasizes that this is a hypothesis, not a conclusion — is that the Canada goose genome possesses an unusual degree of resistance to exogenous gene insertion. The mechanism is not understood.

In terms of behavior, the geese continue to exhibit the characteristics that have defined the species' relationship with human civilization since long before GLMZ existed. They occupy public spaces with proprietary confidence. They hiss at pedestrians, cyclists, automated vehicles, maintenance drones, and security automata with equal conviction. They nest in inconvenient locations and defend those nests with physical violence against anything that approaches, regardless of the approacher's size, capability, or legal authority. A Tier 3 security automaton was filmed retreating from a nesting goose in the Lakeshore Greenway in 2223. The video has been viewed nine million times.

They are, in the considered assessment of this division, magnificent. They are the one organism in GLMZ that treats corponation executives, augmented mercenaries, and military-grade automata with identical contempt. They do not recognize hierarchy. They do not acknowledge threat. They have decided that every space they occupy belongs to them, and two hundred years of technological advancement has not produced a force capable of convincingly arguing otherwise.

The GLMZ Urban Wildlife Advisory issues its annual reminder that Canada geese are a protected species under Great Lakes Metropolitan Zone wildlife statutes, that interfering with nesting geese carries a fine of Φ500, and that the advisory takes no responsibility for injuries sustained by individuals who approach nesting geese despite posted warnings. The geese do not read the warnings either. But in their case, this is because they are geese, not because they are negligent. The advisory wishes to make this distinction clear.