9 Hero Animals and the Dire Straits They Escaped to Get Home Safe

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Giggle-Blizzard the Cat

Cats are often seen in and out of the house, but when Giggle-Blizard went missing in December 2009, his owner began to worry. After having his hind legs crushed by a car, it took the heroic cat 11 days to make it back to his Florida home.

(Photo: Tampa Bay Times)

Max the Airedale Terrier

In October 2008, a car accident spooked Max into running into the woods about 45 miles from his Connecticut home. After weeks of fruitless searching, his owner came home from work one day to find Max sitting in the backyard. He had no injuries from his travels, but he was 11 pounds lighter.

(Photo: Anil Kanji/Getty Images)

Sophie Tucker the Cattle Dog

Sophie fell overboard her owner’s boat along the coast of Queensland, Australia in late 2008. She was found by rangers four months later on St. Bees Island, which is five nautical miles away from where she was last seen aboard the boat. During those four months, Sophie survived off of the meat of goats that inhabited the island.

(Photo: Theme Magazine)

Yosuke the African Grey Parrot

In late April 2012, Yosuke was found on a rooftop in Japan and taken into police custody. A few days later the parrot spoke up to a local veterinarian: “I am Mr. Yosuke Nakamura,” eventually telling the shocked animal worker his home address. After police confirmation, Yosuke was returned to his owners.

(Photo: Drew Avery/Creative Commons via Flickr)

Shane the Akita

When the tsunami warnings sounded in Japan in 2011, it was the job of a man known only as Mr. Kamata to warn his hometown. To do this, he had to leave his Akita, Shane, behind. When the job was done, Kamata rushed home to rescue Shane only to find his path blocked by water. Hours later, Shane arrived at the same evacuation center as Kamata after suffering cuts and bruises from swimming in the tsunami flood water.

(Photo: YukiNoSato/Creative Commons via Flickr)

Dixie the Cat

In 1999, nine years after she originally went missing, Dixie was returned to her owner in Birmingham, England, by a local animal affairs officer. What is even more amazing about this story is that Dixie was a whopping 15 years old when she went missing. The average life span of cats is 13 years, so Dixie was 24 when she returned home.

(Photo: Neversky/Creative Commons via Flickr)

Mason the Terrier-Mix

After a tornado struck his Alabama home, Mason, a one-year-old terrier mix, went missing. His owners searched for their canine friend for days—with no luck. Weeks later, when the family returned to the site of their former home, they found Mason sitting on the front porch. He had suffered two broken legs, but was otherwise unharmed.

(Photo: ABCNews)

Moon the Siberian Husky

A two-year-old Siberian Husky named Moon fled her family's car during a road-trip rest in Nevada and made her way across Nevada's desert and two mountain ranges to return home seven week later. The brave pooch was reunited on April 14, 2008 with owner Doug Dashiell, who had last seen her April 6 near Railroad Valley, a distance he later mapped at 77 miles from home.

(Photo: Jefferey Beall/Creative Commons via Flickr)

Buck the Labrador Retriever

Buck, a Labrador retriever, takes the words “man’s best friend” to a new level: Separated from his owner, Mark Wessells, Buck traveled nearly 500 miles from Virginia to reach the South Carolina resident. Wessells, who lives in Myrtle Beach, temporarily left his two-year-old black Lab with his father in Winchester, Virginia, because he was in the process of moving, reported The Sun News. But about a week after Wessells left Virginia, his father called to tell him Buck had disappeared.

Wessells thought that perhaps someone had stolen his dog, but about six months later, a kind stranger found Buck in the Bellegrove community in Myrtle Beach and took him in. Brett Gallagher, who discovered the black Lab, nicknamed him Deuce, since he found the dog at about 2 a.m. Gallgaher took Buck to the veterinarian, where a microchip embedded in the dog’s body told them Buck’s name and owner. As The Sun Times wrote, Buck “showered his owner in kisses” as soon as Wessells came into the room at the vet’s office.

(Photo: Denise Balyoz Photography via Getty Images)

How far would your family pet travel to find you, to once again take shelter in the loving, caring home you and your family provide? In the case of these seven dogs, one cat, and one crazy smart parrot, the answer is apparently a whole heckuva lot.

Meet Giggle-Blizzard, Max, Sophie Tucker, Yosuke, Shane, Dixie, Mason, Moon, and Buck, the pets who climbed mountains, traversed scorching deserts, swam tsunami-induced flood waters, and survived on an uninhabited island for four months (to name just a few of their collective heroic acts) simply so they could at long last sleep in their own beds.

Enjoy.

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