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NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) – It’s been just a week since the last Mardi Gras parades rolled.

Just when you thought Mardi Gras was gone, the beads are back.

They’re back by the bag full at St. Catherine of Siena School in Metairie.  That’s where kids really catch on to this bead business.

They catch on because they catch a lot of beads.

And it’s been a tradition at the school for the last six years for students to bring their leftover Mardi Gras beads to school.

They bring them in bags.

They bring them in boxes.

Some kids have so many beads, they wheel them in in wagons!

WGNO News with a Twist features reporter Wild Bill Wood found the kids first thing this morning loading the beads into a U-Haul truck.

The truck travels to New Orleans to St. Michael Special School.

And that’s where students with intellectual disabilities have the job of giving the Mardi Gras beads a needed makeover.

Wild Bill found one of the workers at St. Michael Special School really getting into the job.

He’s Joseph Hankins.

And he gets into the job by actually climbing up into one of the big boxes for storing the beads.

By the end of the bead mission, St. Michael will send 15,000 strands of beads back to another Mardi Gras.