Seventy-two-year-old street performer Mamie Marie Francois was diagnosed with the dreaded coronavirus back on March 22. But she’s feeling better. So much so that on Good Friday, she zipped up her plush pink Easter Bunny suit and pedaled off to the French Quarter on her tricked-out adult tricycle, with the thunderous twin speakers blasting beats. Francois’ comeback trek — the first time she’d been on the road since March 14 — lasted four hours and climaxed with some celebratory twerking on an otherwise lonely Bourbon Street.

The sight of Francois shaking her cottony tail to Da Entourage’s rap-style “Bunny Hop” caught the attention of passing motorists who were unperturbed that the cotton candy-colored bunny was blocking traffic. It was a smile-producing sign of normalcy in the French Quarter where a dreary lockdown had replaced a colorful holiday weekend.

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Francois’ recovery was especially triumphant, considering that only a couple of weeks earlier, a well-meaning fan had accidentally declared that she had died of the coronavirus infection. Francois saved a screen grab of the Instagram post that featured photographs of her and the caption “R.I.P. This one kind of hurts, sleep well.”

My friend called me at 12:30 at night,” Francois recalled. “I said, ‘What’s the matter?’ She said ‘I heard you passed away.’”

Francois said that she might have had a fever, but she was certainly among the living. At her insistence, the greatly exaggerated report of her death was deleted from social media.

For eight years Francois has been a fixture of the French Quarter scene. She’s a one-woman rolling disco, pedaling her tricycle through the narrow streets, broadcasting tunes and strobing dazzling light onto the antique architecture. The black canopy over her trike is ringed with biblical quotes.

“Judge not that you be not judged,” it reads.

Francois pauses regularly to dance, pose for selfies with passers-by, take musical requests and accept gratuities from charmed tourists.

To keep things fresh, she changes her costume seasonally, from a glittering green leprechaun to an Uncle Sam-esque ballerina, to a go-go dancer Saints fan, to Santa Claus. Francois said she hasn’t missed an Easter in the Quarter since 2012.

“I just love Easter,” she said.

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Francois blames her gregariousness for her recent illness. On March 24 she joined the St. Patrick’s Day crowd on Bourbon Street, cavorting as usual, despite warnings from city and state officials to begin social distancing to avoid the contagion. She said she was just bored.

Francois said that when she was notified that she tested positive, she was condemned to self-quarantine for two weeks. Sometimes her fever crept above 100 degrees, but she was mostly spared the coughing and respiratory symptoms that others suffered. The illness came and went, she said. On March 28 her fever peaked one last time.

“I got kind of nervous that night,” she said, “I didn’t want to go to that hospital.”

In addition to Tylenol and NyQuil, her son recommended she chew a mixture of garlic and honey.

“It burned,” she said.

Francois will never know if the home remedy had any effect on the illness whatsoever, but that night seemed to be the coronavirus’s last hurrah. In the following days she felt better and better, though her fever had been replaced by a creeping case of the blues.

By Good Friday, Francois couldn’t sit still anymore. She’d heard that her beloved, ever-busy Bourbon Street had become a ghost town and she wanted to see for herself.

“I wanted to get out and breath,” she said. “I said, ‘I got to get out of this depression.’”

Francois said she had learned her lesson visa-vis social distancing and personal protection equipment. On her Good Friday romp from Louisiana Avenue to St. Ann Street and back, she said she wore blue rubber gloves under her furry bunny gloves and a face mask under her bunny hood. And, Francois said, she kept sufficient space between herself and the folks she passed.

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At the start of her trip, Francois said, she stopped in front of the house of a friend who is combating cancer. She danced for her friend’s amusement before continuing downtown.

Francois said that as she rolled by people on the strangely quiet streets, their faces would ignite with recognition.

“I’d say, ‘Yeah, come on, take my picture. I’m much alive.’”

Nancy Mae Landry, a newly unemployed former employee of a travel website, said that on Friday morning she was out doing her “essential errands” when she drove through the eerily empty but still beautiful French Quarter to try to stave off some of the monotony of self-quarantine. She was well rewarded.

As Landry turned onto Bourbon Street, Francois appeared. When Landry began videoing, Francois obligingly dismounted and danced.

“It was a great moment for me,” Landry said. “I really needed it. I said, ‘This is the reason I love this city.’ Like so many people, I want to grow up to be her.”

Barbara Sprott, a retired chemical engineer, was walking off her cabin fever on the streetcar tracks on St. Charles Avenue when Francois pumped past in the street playing “Choppa Style” at top volume.

“Lo and behold, there she was in a bunny suit,” Sprott said. “Just seeing her told me, ‘We’re getting through this.”