The little mule was lost, an orphan in the 1880s when it stumbled into the path of Wyoming’s Mark Twain. Humorist and Laramie newspaperman Edgar Wilson Nye, known as Bill Nye, fell in love and the two immediately adopted each other.
“This funny little creature appeared on the streets of Laramie from no one knew where,” his son Frank Nye later said. “Mom said that it ambled up to Edgar and rubbing its nose against his sleeve, brayed earnestly in his ear. From that time on, the arrival was known as Bill Nye’s mule, Boomerang.”
More than a century before another Bill Nye became the famous science guy, Boomerang became Bill Nye’s mascot and the humorist believed the silly creature brought him luck.
Whenever the cares of life weighed too heavily upon Nye and he grew weary of civilization, it was Boomerang who would cheer him up. This was according to his son in his book about his father, “Bill Nye, His Own Life Story.”
“I like to load up my narrow-gauge mule and take a trip into the mountains,” Nye said. “I call my mule Boomerang because I never know where he is going to strike.”
Nye said that his mule was a perpetual source of surprises.
“A protracted acquaintance with him, however, has taught me to stand in front of him when I address him,” Nye said. “For the recoil of Boomerang is very disastrous.”
Boomerang was described as very much below medium height with a sad, faraway look in his eye. He wore an expression of woe and disappointment and gloom, because life had been to him a series of blasted hopes and shattered ambitions.
Long before there was Bill Nye the Science Guy there was Laramie, Wyoming, newspaperman Bill Nye, one of the leading humorists of the late 19th century. His little orphan mule named Boomerang inspired him when life didn’t seem so funny. (Illustration from "Bill Nye and Boomerang" W.B. Conkey C0,o Chicago 1896) 
Long before there was Bill Nye the Science Guy there was Laramie, Wyoming, newspaperman Bill Nye, one of the leading humorists of the late 19th century. His little orphan mule named Boomerang inspired him when life didn’t seem so funny. (Wyoming Historical Society) 
Edgar Wilson Nye was better known as Bill Nye, the humorist and Wyoming’s Mark Twain. He traveled the world speaking but his heart always remained in Wyoming and with his little mule, Boomerang, who became the namesake for both his mine and his newspaper in Laramie. 
Bill Nye, the humorist that became Wyoming’s Mark Twain, claimed that his donkey, Boomerang, once worked at a traveling circus as “the famous trakene stallion.” (Excerpt from “Bill Nye and Boomerang” by Bill Nye)
Boomerang The Circus Entertainer
Nye claimed that Boomerang had missed his true calling in life and had longed to work in the circus.
“In his youth he yearned to be the trick-mule of a circus,” Nye said. “Though he fitted himself for that profession, he finds himself in the decline of life with his bright anticipations nothing but a vast and robust ruin.”
To honor this desire of his friend, the nationally prominent humorist once wrote a satire piece about a traveling circus and highlighted the role Boomerang would have played.
Nye, who would often illustrate his own stories, drew a cartoon of his little donkey titled “The Famous Trakene Stallion, Boomerang.”
“I challenge the world to produce the equal of this highly intellectual and amusing little cuss,” Nye wrote. “Boomerang is the only living performing trick stallion ever born in captivity.”
He described the mule as having the extraordinary talent of standing on four feet all at once. Visitors could visit him in the mammoth pavilion and, for the price of admission, could see him perform.
Boomerang’s trick was to eat out of the hand with the utmost docility and reckless abandon.
Boomerang’s Newspaper Legacy
Being an enterprising Wyoming pioneer, Nye found investors willing to back him in opening a newspaper in Laramie. They knew him as an entertaining writer and he threw himself into the project with gusto.
He founded the paper in 1881 and it cost Nye and his partners $16,000 a year to publish six times a week. He named the paper “Boomerang,” by which it is still known.
“Sundry reasons are given for naming it the Boomerang,” his son Frank later said. “One was that so many copies came back. The fact is it was named for Bill Nye’s mule, Boomerang.”
Although originally published out of a shoe store, Nye found more space in another building in Laramie.
“The paper was published in the loft of a livery stable. That is the reason they called it a stock company,” Nye said. “You could come up the stairs into the office or you could twist the tail of the iron gray mule and take the elevator.”
In gratitude for services rendered, Nye’s first published book, “Bill Nye and Boomerang: The Tale of a Meek-Eyed Mule, and Some Other Literary Gems” was dedicated to the luck-bearing animal.
“To My Mule Boomerang,” he wrote in his dedication. “Whose bright smile haunts me still, and whose low, mellow notes are ever sounding in my ears, to whom I owe all that I am as a great man, and whose presence has inspired me ever and anon throughout the years that are gone.”
Nye then waxed poetic, remembering with fondness one of his best friends in life.
“This coronet of sparkling literary gems as it were, this wreath of fragrant forget-me-nots and meek-eyed johnny-jump-ups,” he wrote. “With all its wealth of rare tropical blossoms and high-priced exotics, is cheerfully and even hilariously dedicated By the Author.”
Boomerang And The Mine
Boomerang did more than just inspire the name of Nye’s newspaper. A year before, he became the namesake for Nye’s mine.
“I located a claim called the Boomerang. I named it after my favorite mule,” Nye wrote. “I call my mule Boomerang because he has such an eccentric orbit and no one can tell just when he will clash with some other heavenly body.”
Nye said that when he and Boomerang would visit a mining camp, the supplies of blasting powder and other combustibles are removed to some old shaft and placed under a strong guard.
“In one or two instances where this precaution was not taken the site of the camp is now a desolate, barren waste, occupied by the prairie-dog and the jackrabbit,” Nye said.
Nye claimed that Boomerang was known to react quite strongly when he would find a nitroglycerin can in the heart of a flourishing camp
“When he has room to throw himself, he can arrange a larger engagement for the coroner than any mule I ever saw,” he said.
Long before there was Bill Nye the Science Guy there was Laramie, Wyoming, newspaperman Bill Nye, one of the leading humorists of the late 19th century. His little orphan mule named Boomerang inspired him to write his first book. 
After marriage, Bill Nye said he had $2 to his name and a new set of whiskers. (Excerpt from “Bill Nye, His Own Life Story by Frank Nye) 
The many faces of Edgar Wilson Nye, known as the humorist Bill Nye. He founded the paper in Laramie and named it the Boomerang, after his beloved mule. (Excerpt from “Bill Nye, His Own Life Story by Frank Nye) 
Bill Nye (not the science guy) was a humorist that was as famous as Mark Twain in his day. He founded the newspaper in Laramie and named it Boomerang after his beloved donkey. He captioned this picture of himself: “A thoughtful, scholarly and choice fragment of modern architecture with lines of care about the firmly chiseled mouth.” (Excerpt from “Bill Nye, His Own Life Story by Frank Nye) 
Bill Nye was a humorist who illustrated many of his own stories. He was known as Wyoming’s Mark Twain and named his newspaper in Laramie, Boomerang, after his beloved mule. (Excerpt from “Bill Nye, His Own Life Story by Frank Nye)
The Night Boomerang Was Shot
Life was dangerous in Wyoming in the late 1880s, even for a mule.
Nye remembers one night vividly when his mule encountered a bullet. They were out at his mine when it happened.
It all started with Boomerang’s soft braying.
“He has a sigh like the long-drawn breath of a fog-horn,” Nye said. “He likes to come to my tent in the morning about daylight and sigh in my ear before I am awake.”
Nye described the mule as a highly amusing little cuss, and that it tickled Boomerang a good deal to pour about 13 and a half gallons of his melody into Nye’s ear while he was “sweetly dreaming.”
“He enjoys my look of pleasant surprise when I wake up,” Nye said. “There is nothing small about Boomerang. He is generous to a fault and lavishes his low, sad, tremulous wail on everyone who has time to listen to it.”
Nye said that anyone who has not been awakened from a deep sleep by a mule does not know what it is to be loved by a patient, faithful, dumb animal. However, Nye was so surprised the first time he was awakened in this manner that he reacted quickly.
“I rose in my wrath and some other clothes, and went out and shot him,” Nye said. “I discharged every chamber of my revolver into his carcass, and went back to bed to wait till it got lighter.”
In the morning, when the sun had rose, Nye went out to bury Boomerang.
“The remains were off about 20 yards eating bunch grass,” Nye said. “In the gloom and uncertainty of night, I had shot six shots into an old windlass near a deserted shaft.”
After this, Nye said that the two would “get along first-rate together.”
“When I am lonesome I shoot at him,” Nye said. “And when he is lonesome he comes up and lays his head across my shoulder, and looks at me with great soulful eyes and sings to me.”
Ode To A Donkey
While still working as the editor of the Boomerang in Laramie, Bill Nye began writing columns for The Denver Post and went on speaking tours around the world.
He eventually left the paper, but no matter how far he traveled, Boomerang, his mangy mule, was always in his heart.
After Boomerang died, Nye wrote a poem for his beloved friend that he included in that first book he had also dedicated to his lonesome little mule.
Sing on, O mule, and warble
In the twilight gray,
Unhidden by the heartless throng.
Sing of thy parents on thy father's side.
Yearn for the days now past and gone
For he who pens these halting,
Limping lines to thee
Doth bid thee yearn, and yearn, and yearn.
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.
