Blue was only two years old when Hurricane Harvey broke the fence in her yard in Corpus Christi, Texas, in 2017. The water swept everything away, including her. Her family searched for her, waited, and eventually had to accept that she might never return.
Eight years passed. No one heard anything about Blue until someone found her alone and frightened inside a public restroom in Cameron Park, in Waco, about 300 miles (482 km.) from her home. They took her to the Pet Circle Regional Animal Center, where staff did what they always do: run a reader over her back to check whether she had a microchip.
She did. And it was still active, with the details of the same family that had lost her nearly a decade earlier amid the storm. No one knows what paths Blue traveled during all that time, but that small chip beneath her skin never stopped waiting for the moment to bring her back home.