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[SuperLlama]

Question 1: I caught a lizard. Is it completely useless? Everyone seems to hate it.
Question 2: I read on the wiki that dragonflies actually make good pets. How do you manage to trap them?
Question 3: How come I can only trap vermin?
Question 4: I tell my trapper to go get a creature, and he runs to the food stockpile and wanders around with the cage, and then he gets a red ? blinking on his face and runs away, then comes back a few seconds later. This loops for infinity. What the penguin is he doing!?

[Magua]

Question 1: I caught a lizard. Is it completely useless? Everyone seems to hate it.

People who don't hate it can eat it.  People who like lizards may adopt it as a pet.

Question 2: I read on the wiki that dragonflies actually make good pets. How do you manage to trap them?

Have animal traps made and available.  Use the 'catch small animal' (or whatever it's called) from the kennel.

Question 3: How come I can only trap vermin?

That's how it works.  Larger creatures require a cage trap, and they have to wander into it, they can't be "hurried".

Question 4: I tell my trapper to go get a creature, and he runs to the food stockpile and wanders around with the cage, and then he gets a red ? blinking on his face and runs away, then comes back a few seconds later. This loops for infinity. What the penguin is he doing!?

Looking for vermin, I believe.  I vaguely remember something about only trapping around food stockpiles.  You could try setting a food stockpile that accepts nothing you have near vermin and see if he goes there.

[SuperLlama]

Looking for vermin, I believe.  I vaguely remember something about only trapping around food stockpiles.  You could try setting a food stockpile that accepts nothing you have near vermin and see if he goes there.

Thanks, I tried that and it worked 

it looks kind of funny putting a food stockpile (with everything disabled ofc) in the middle of a forest, but it works great

[Warlord255]

The food-stockpile preference (when they trap everything else, they will go elsewhere) is, ostensibly, to protect your food.

Also, untamed vermin make great snacks.

[Samyotix]

... except that no one seems to want to eat fire snakes. These just keep sitting in the animal trap ...
... but there's a way to get rid of them - just sell the animal trap with the firesnake in it

With pests there seem to be some that most dwarves don't mind (squirrel, dragonfly) and others that many dwarves hate (rats, toads, lizards I think). I'm not sure if a dwarf gets a bad thought from seeing another dwarf with a pet the first dwarf hates though

To answer the actual questions (though SuperLlama answered already) :
1. Most animals disappear after sitting in a stockpile for a while ... apparently they get eaten.
2. Build "kennels" building. Go to carpenter, have animal trap made. q over kennels, "trap small animal". Once you have a few of these, optionally "tame small animal".
If you build a zoo for idle dwarves to hang out in, you can assign tamed vermin to cages. Make sure not to use vermin that many of your dwarves hate.
4. I'd recommend building a Kennels for trapping vermin deep within your fort. This will help clean it up and reduce the number of unhappy thoughts from vermin ... 

[Sevrun]

if you're trying to avoid that problem a cat or two works fine if you adjust your refuse options, set them to Dump Other (it's at the bottom of the list) and they'll toss out vermin corpses automatically.  Not really on topic, I know, but just offering my two cents.

[Immortal]

To help you on how to catch certain things like a dragonfly. If your looking for a :
Squirrel or other things of the like - put the trap on the forest floor.
Toad and Lizards - put the trap by water.
Dragon Fly and Birds - Build a wall outside with a way up then place the trap on the top.

Basically if you see a vermin follow it and see what it does. Place the trap accordingly.