Alexis Moriarty wanted to help.
The teenager and her mom, Michelle, dropped off underwear, towels and toothpaste to donation centers in Kerr County on Sunday, following the devastating floods nearby that have killed more than 100 people. Dozens are still missing.
The two then pulled off the highway near Comfort to join a search team.
"We were walking up the Guadalupe River, up and down, seeing if we could find anything that belonged to anybody," Alexis said. "Or, anybody."
The mother and daughter, who are from San Antonio, picked through brush and muck for nearly two hours. Disasters like floods, tornadoes and hurricanes have a habit of picking up people's belongings and shaking them like a snow globe — and then breaking the snow globe. Alexis and her mom saw detached door frames, a koozie, even a badge from a school band stuck in a tree.
It started to rain. They worried about more flooding and decided to head home.
That's when Alexis spotted a stuffed animal on the ground near a mass of bushes. It was covered in mud and sticks, but she could make out a set of button eyes and a stitched mouth. She picked it up, nestled it in the bed of the family's truck, and they drove home.
"I can't just leave this here," she remembered thinking.
In the aftermath of one of Texas' most devastating floods, people have been unearthing stuffed animals. A lamb, a giraffe, a horse. The recovery of these objects speaks not only to the way floods ferry people's most intimate possessions miles from home, but also to the age of those lost; at least 27 campers and counselors, many of them younger than 10, have been confirmed dead.
People, like Alexis, have been taking these animals home, cleaning them and posting photos to social media in the hopes they can find their owners. Or, someone who knew their owner.
"Maybe it's somebody that's still alive and this is one of the last things they have for their child," Alexis' mom, Michelle, said.
Danny McDonald didn't know what to expect when he headed out to search for flood victims.
The lawyer, who lives with his family in Boerne, spent six hours on Sunday scouring the banks of the Guadalupe River. He said among the sleeping bags, swimsuits and snorkels they saw, the search team found the body of an adult man. He called it "surreal."
About halfway through the search, McDonald saw something at his feet.
"I find this teddy bear, face up, staring at me," he said. Its blue eyes cut through the muck. Compared to the clothes and suitcases McDonald saw scattered around him, this stuffed cloth shape, later identified as a baby giraffe, called to him.
"It's something that would offer comfort to kids and that they would have brought to camp as their comfort item," McDonald, a father, said. He found a second stuffed animal, a seal, sitting upright against a tree.
McDonald, who said he still has his childhood stuffed animal Oscar, took both home with him. He sprayed them with a garden hose and waited for the rain to pass so they could dry in the sun. His wife uploaded photos of the giraffe and seal to social media groups created for people who've found personal items in the flood.
They're still waiting for the owners to reach out.
Alexis and her mom are also waiting. Once they got home with the stuffed animal, they weren't quite sure what to do with it.
"We were trying to figure out the best way to wash him without destroying him," Alexis said.
Her mom hand-washed it in the laundry room sink three or four times, and said it took 30 minutes before the water began to run clear. The scrubbing revealed a lamb in good condition, despite what it had been through. They deemed him a boy and named him Lamb Lamb, and noticed he'd lost some weight.
"He was heavy because he was full of water and sticks and brush," Alexis said. "He's super light now."
Alexis posted photos of the lamb to Facebook and TikTok. The photos have since been added to the social media account for an organization called the Lost Stuffy Project which, according to its website, helps replace and return stuffed animals to children who have lost them in natural disasters.
Alexis, a high school senior, said she has a bed full of stuffed animals. Still a child herself, she said she understands the comfort they bring.
"When you're sad or there's something horrible that's happened, even if you're in a good mood, all you want to do is be able to hold your stuffy and go to sleep with it," she said.
The Moriartys and McDonald know there are families out there looking.
On Tuesday, the mother of a girl who died in the floods posted to the lost and found Facebook group. She was searching for a stuffed monkey with a smile and a tan tail that belonged to her 8-year-old daughter — her "most prized possession," she wrote. Her daughter's name was etched on the square tag.
Those combing the riverbanks and social media responded, eager to help find what had been lost.
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