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[Soadreqm]

I think I've finally found my first Giant Cave Spider, in a magma pool of all things. I didn't even know they could inhabit magma pools. Anyway, I'd rather catch it alive, to maybe sic on some traders or goblins later. Can I just catch it with a cage trap? If yes, how should I go about actually getting it into the trap? Oh, and is there any way to tell where the thing is before it Springs Into Action?

[Foa]

I think I've finally found my first Giant Cave Spider, in a magma pool of all things. I didn't even know they could inhabit magma pools. Anyway, I'd rather catch it alive, to maybe sic on some traders or goblins later. Can I just catch it with a cage trap? If yes, how should I go about actually getting it into the trap? Oh, and is there any way to tell where the thing is before it Springs Into Action?

• Seal the area
• Make a tunnel to the area
• Set a cage trap in there
• Place leash with a cat attached to it farther down the tunnel
  
• Open the tunnel
• Watch it try to eat the all-purpose animal
• Get the cage
• Make a 10x 10 room with one side completely made out of clear glass, a floodgate in the back ( for catching the wanker and a hole in the ceiling which can be locked, make sure to connect the wankers' rooms with a grate ( they breed via spores )
• Drop the wanker in there
• When it is clean up time, set up a cage trap and cat bait on a leash
• Open the gate
• Collect the junk
• 10-13 until you die...

If you want to steal from the merchants without consequence, ask me.

[AlienChickenPie]

Last time I checked, giant cave spiders weren't trappable.
What you can do is dig out a nice chamber close to the spider's lair. Make sure it's impossible for dwarves inside your fortress to accidentally venture into the chamber. Also, make sure you can seal the chamber's entrance on short notice using a floodgate or a bridge. Use an expendable soldier or pet to lure the spider into the chamber, and then close it.
If you want to harvest giant cave spider silk, build a room adjacent to the spider's chamber, connected to it with a fortification. A drawbridge next to the fortification would function as a shutter, hiding the spider from view. When you want to get some silk, lower the bridge and send a soldier into the room. The spider will shoot at it. Raise the bridge and send your dwarves to harvest the silk.
If you want to use it to kill things, make sure it's located below an area to which you can funnel any guests and install a retracting bridge. To prevent any mass scares, you should construct everything before you bring the spider in, and you should also consider a two-level drop with two bridges (one opens, then closes, then the other one opens) or some other way to make sure the spider is never exposed to the general population.

[LegoLord]

They have the [PET_EXOTIC] tag, so they must be trappable.  Otherwise you wouldn't be able to tame them.

[Soadreqm]

Well, at the moment the spider isn't doing anything. I have a tunnel with a cage trap and a tethered horse in it, but nothing seems to be showing interest. I hope it hasn't fallen into the magma or anything. I think I'll send someone to look for it when I get the first migrant wave.

I'll know if it is trappable when it either gets trapped or eats the horse. They don't destroy buildings, right? The only thing keeping my dwarves from the magma pool are flimsy wooden doors.

***UPDATE***
Okay, looks like a fire man triggered the trap, and is now hopelessly stuck in a wooden cage. If only it had something to burn the cage away, it could just walk free. Anyway, I can't choose whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. On one hand, I caught a fire man, which is nice. On the other hand, I'll have to send someone to the invisible monster room to retrieve the cage. Oh, well.

***UPDATE***
The fire man did break out somehow. The cage is gone, presumably burnt away. I guess I shouldn't be all that surprised, but I was really under the impression that things in cages were completely isolated from the outside world and unable to do anything to free themselves. What happened here? Could a fire snake or something have burned the cage away, freeing the fire man to murder the horse? It is a mystery.

***UPDATE***
Woe! Calamity! There is in fact no Giant Cave Spider present! I sent one of the new immigrants to scout the perimeter, and nowhere, in the pool room itself or the tunnel system I dug before I found it did anything jump out of the shadows to try and eat him. It appears that I will have to make do with ogres and magma dwellers for my intruder devouring solutions.

How did this happen? The room clearly had two units of giant cave spider silk in it. I collected one of them, and some magma creature tore down the other. Could the Spawn of Ungoliant have fallen into the magma? And more importantly, could it come back if I abandon and reclaim?

[LegoLord]

Yep, sounds like your spider died.  My brother had a GCS on his fort that mysteriously died, but later found a new GCS web, so you could end up finding another elsewhere on the map, assuming you have a chasm.

[Soadreqm]

Nope, no chasm. The magma pool is the only feature I have. I guess I'll just keep caging other things. I recaught the fire man that escaped earlier, and managed to snatch three ogres while losing only two bait dwarves.

Do ogres breed, by the way? An ogre pit with an insane amount of ogres might just be able to replace the GCS pit I was hoping to build.

[Astus Ater]

Not as good as a pit of hungry GCS, but then again being thrown into a pit of ogres in heat sucks too.

[MathijsBuster]

Look in the unit list and scroll all the way down.
Is there a dead Giant Cave Spider listed there?

[Soadreqm]

No dead giant cave spiders listed. Lots of other creatures, but no GCS. No corpse listed in stocks either, although I guess there wouldn't be if it fell into the magma.

[LegoLord]

It might have escaped, or it could be that it is actually somewhere else and some of its web was in the magma pipe due to some weird world gen bug.

[Soadreqm]

Eh, if it was hiding elsewhere on the map, it would have maimed someone already. The finder showed no other features. I'll just have to make do with the resources I have. Apparantly the map gets visits from werewolves. I guess those will be fearsome enough.

On a side note, one should never become so obsessed with anything as to neglect basic fortress welfare. The fort seems to be recovering from the tantrum spiral, but things were looking pretty grim for a while. Now I have a sheriff, so I hopefully don't have to suffer through that again. Unless I mistake the Ogre Release Lever for the Front Door Lever or something. Oh, and the sheriff, one of the original fourteen that came with the current reclaim party, has racked enough dead dwarves to get a title. He's scheduled for a beating and about three hundred days of jail time himself.