I've just had a uniquely hilarious - though of course terrible, yadda yadda - experience with trapping an elven caravan.
It all starts out unremarkably. I lock the savages in the depot room, wait for them to lose their minds and die so that I can have their wooden flutes and low quality "organic" cloth. After some gory business a single berserk donkey, just a regular donkey, is still alive inside the room. At this point I think to myself, it's just a donkey, they're not that big or strong, right? So I make two rush squads from all the immigrants I've yet to sequester into mindless tasks, unlock the door and storm the animal.
Little did I know that this act would end up costing me roughly 40 lives (out of a population of 60). After massacring everyone in both squads in about 5000 frames, the donkey rampaged through the fort, one-shot-killing most dwarves it came across. It even did in the tough, strong and agile miners, which I found incredibly surprising because I've had miners nix even titans' fun with a well-placed blow of the pick. Eventually the donkey ran into an access tunnel where I locked it in until it died (of laughter, I assume).
So I'm wondering, what gives? Is this just terrible luck? Was I underestimating the power of common farm animals? Does berserkness give merchant animals ungodly power? Share similar experiences if you have them.
P.S. Sadly it didn't occur to me to pictorially document the bloodbath, but just imagine a bauxite fortress with lots of dwarf engravings.