So I read the article on mass pitting
http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Mass_pitting and basically made an exact replica of the design, with an empty room sealed with locked doors and a lever-controlled drawbridge underneath it to act as my "arena." However, when I did a test run with just some crundles (didn't want to try it on the goblins until I knew it worked,) I got tons of "interrupted by crundle" cancellations and spent a while cleaning up the mess they made. I was confused, but chalked it up to crundles apparently being one of the special types who can evade, like thieves.
The next time, I tried it with some Cavy pups and Sows, and the same thing happened, despite the bridge to the arena being pre-raised, so they had to be escaping from the top floor, with the cages and hatches. Also, mysteriously, some peacocks that I didn't even realise I had in my cage area also got out and interrupted half my fort when I pitted the Cavies.
In both cases eventually one or two would make it down to the arena, but not before several escapes and a lot of interruptions.
Now I'm still not sure if I'm doing something wrong or am just picking the wrong Guinea Pigs (Pun INTENDED HARDCORE) for my pitting tests, since I have had the expereince that any time I tell any of my dwarves to do anything with something that has the word "Cavy" in it's name, they escape and interrupt everyone (Happens if I order to butcher, cage, pasture, chain up and apparently Pit a Cavy, even tame). Even the pups. Given this aggressive behaviour and the words "Sow" and "Boar" i ntheir titles, I assumed a Cavy was some kind of ferocious warthog, only to wiki them and find out they are GUINEA PIGS.
Are either of these expected behaviour? Problems Mass Pitting non-thieves, or problems handling Cavies?
I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong in either case