Somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, a barn owl has just eaten a mouse.

Twelve hours from now, give or take, it will regurgitate a compact mass of fur and bones known as an owl pellet. The pellet will contain a near-perfect skeleton of the devoured rodent and a treasure trove of data for researchers, providing insights on the owl, its prey and the environment in which it lives.

How that pellet makes it from the gut of an owl and into a classroom begins with a wet “plop” as it hits the forest floor, setting off an unusual supply chain that stretches from the wooded expanses of the West Coast to schools, museums and research laboratories around the world, fueling an entire industry of people who’ve devoted their lives and livelihoods to this unique economic and ecological niche.

All birds of prey, including eagles, falcons and hawks, spit up pellets of the small animals they consume. But barn owls are special, said Bret Gaussoin, owner of Pellets Inc. based in Bellingham, Wash., one of several American companies devoted exclusively to owl pellets. Their weak digestive systems and tendency to swallow prey whole typically allow skeletons to be expelled “virtually intact,” he said.

Genia Connell, a third-grade teacher at Leonard Elementary School in Troy, Mich., says she uses owl pellets as part of her life science curriculum.

“When the kids begin dissecting the pellets, they become so engaged and so vested in discovering what ‘their’ owl ate and comparing their findings with classmates,” Connell said. “If you’re that kid who discovers their owl ate three or four different animals in a single pellet, well then you automatically get hero status among the other 8-year-olds, at least for the hour!”

As Gaussoin tells it, the U.S. owl pellet industry took shape in the mid-1990s with the retirement of Irwin Slesnick, a biologist at Western Washington University in Bellingham. He pioneered their use as a classroom tool and for years had paid people to collect pellets from the wild. Gaussoin, a Western Washington biology student at the time, was among them.

He said he used to spend a lot of time watching for and trapping hawks. “One day I found a pile of owl pellets in the woods while I was looking for a Cooper’s hawk nest,” he said. He sold that first batch to Slesnick for $45, or about 40 cents apiece. He’s been collecting and selling them ever since.

When Slesnick retired, Gaussoin and many of his fellow collectors opened their own businesses. Today, there are at least six dedicated owl pellet operations in the United States, nearly all based in the Pacific Northwest. Together they sell millions of owl pellets each year to learning institutions around the world.

“This is such an ethical way to teach science,” says Chris Anderson, who runs Owl Brand Discovery Kits, a pellet retailer in Tacoma, Wash. In the classroom, “nothing is killed or dissected in order to learn some of the sa