Honestly if I saw 5 animals drop dead of old age at the same time, I'd be freaked out as well.
When I get a usable ladder I'll play Smallhand. I read about it and it's quite interesting even though I can't see the pics.
28 Slate, year 136, Mid-Spring. Citizen 83, deaths 6194
The kitchen. From top to bottom: honey and oil; flour, sugar, leaves, and eggs; rock nut cakes.
The soap stock has been recovering after I locked the second bath.
The currently locked second bath:
The fore-mentioned elven caravan, somehow got into my dump shaft when I didn't open the gate in time for them to leave.
The shaft goes straight to the magma pool. The C is magma crab chitin that endures the heat.
The magma pool is a power plant that burns garbage and fuel the smelters.
The only entry to the shaft (1 tile north to the minecart) is channeled out.
I have no idea how they got in, and it's difficult to get them out, even more so to smuggle them out of the map when &'s are rampaging. And if I let them starve there, they'll become zombies that spam cancellation when dwarfs are dumping. I came up with a solution: Bombarding them with my decade of bone pile. A stream of little 2's flows into the shaft:
It worked. They jumped and ducked and bumped into each other and eventually into the magma.
!!elf!!
Meanwhile down in ____, there is an ____ which is emaciated and short and obese at the same time. Horrible indeed.