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

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