South Florida iguana removal companies were scooping up hundreds of cold-stunned and dead lizards Sunday in a seemingly record-breaking roundup due to the cold snap, according to local business owners.

“We are scooping them up by the dozens,” said Blake Wilkins, owner of Redline Iguana Removal in Hollywood.

It was 35.1 degrees with a wind chill of 27 around 7 a.m. Sunday at Miami Internation Airport, beating the previous Feb. 1 record low of 36, set in 1909. With those cold temps, the iguana removal business was booming.

Iguanas and other reptiles can lose muscle control and go into a state of shock, appearing “frozen,” when temperatures dip near freezing. On Friday, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission lifted its normal restrictions and said that on Sunday and Monday, people could trap the iguanas, a non-native invasive species, and bring them to five FWC offices so they could be humanely killed or transferred to permitted pet operators.

Wilkins said his trappers started working from about 5 a.m. to 6 a.m. to take advantage of the weather and had already been to at least 100 locations by Sunday afternoon. At one golf course, Redline Iguana Removal picked up about 100 iguanas within an hour.

“We’re probably at like 2,000 iguanas,” Wilkins said.

The cold temperatures, combined with the wind knocking the iguanas out of trees, created a “kind of double factor,” he said, adding that he had dodged a falling iguana earlier.

Wilkins said he’s been removing iguanas for a decade, and this is definitely the strongest cold front with the most frozen iguanas he’s seen. About 50% of the iguanas removed were dead.

“I’d say it happens every year but not to this magnitude,” he said. “This is a strong one, for sure.”

The company truck was “absolutely stacked” with cold-stunned and dead iguanas, and the calls for removal will continue Monday, he said.

“It may be kind of gruesome for people, but it’s a good idea of what we’ve gotten,” Wilkins said.

Steve Kavashansky, owner of Iguana Busters in West Palm Beach, joked that he was doing much better than the iguanas were on Sunday. His business offers removal from Jupiter to just north of Miami.

The calls for removal across South Florida have been nonstop, and Iguana Busters hasn’t had time to take on new customers because it’s so busy, Kavashansky said. By around 2 p.m., his trappers were on their 45th call of the day.

His company had collected close to 150 iguanas, and the majority of them were cold-stunned rather than dead, he said. From his experience, the iguanas have been acclimating to the cooler temperatures over the years.

“Last year, we maybe had five, maybe 10 calls, and that was over the whole winter,” Kavashansky said. “This year, just today alone, we are up to 45 calls.”

While the FWC designated locations for members of the public to drop off captured, cold-stunned iguanas on Sunday and Monday, Kavashansky said he would not recommend picking them up.

The FWC did not respond to a request for comment on how many iguanas were turned over Sunday in South Florida.

A couple of years ago, one woman picked up a stunned iguana and put it in her car, Kavashansky said. The iguana woke up as it warmed up, whipped her with its tail, and she crashed.

“If you’re not trained to deal with these animals, I wouldn’t do it,” he said.

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