When Mardi Gras revelers in Vicksburg clamor at Saturday’s parade for the must-have of the season — beads, of course — they will be getting the real thing, caught on the streets of New Orleans.

Each year since about 1996, local Boy Scout troops and their adult scoutmasters and chaperones have trekked to the Crescent City to catch as much as they can and haul it back to Vicksburg. For the past six years, Scouts have sold bags upon bags of beads, trinkets, cups, stuffed animals and other Carnival essentials to float-riders in the River City’s annual downtown parade.

“We get a couple of hundred pounds each year,” said Mike Rasch, scoutmaster for Troop 638, who started the trips with fellow scoutmaster Richard Van Den Akker. Sales have funded troop summer camps, trips and, for three years in the early 2000s, helped build the scouts’ float in the Vicksburg parade.

“Instead of spending money on the trips and just throwing the beads, we decided to sell them,” said Van Den Akker, leader of Troop 76.