Well I haven't been playing very long so I don't have quite so much to be surprised (bitter? jaded? Pick your favorite adjective) about, but today something did surprise me:
A dwarf acted smart!
I had just finished my cistern system with an automatic pump down and a series of pumps up (the cistern is 10 z levels down). So I run the first pump and it fills up. Unfortunately I forgot to put a lever on the first gear mechanism so I couldn't shut it off. Luckily I had already put the pumps out in and so I switched those bad boys on and everything was peachy.
The problem occurred when I finally got the switch installed and turned off the first pump. You see, the first pump had been draining the river at that spot and so allowed for a place for all my water that I was pumping out to go. However, when I switched off the in pump, the river + the dumped water met up and filled up the void left by the in-pump. Quite quickly too.
After that, there was no where left for the water to go, so it flowed up into my water wheel chamber and out the banks of the channel (right into an elven caravan at that). So before it got too bad, I ordered the whole system shut off. Here we get to the smart dwarf. He goes in, turns off the pump, but by that time (because for some reason I decided building the lever on the far wall was a good idea) the rest of the room is 6/7 and 7/7. But there was still the stairway that led down to all the other pumps. So he nipped down there.
Now that alone surprised me. I figured he'd just stand around or try to go out the way he came, and die. I had already ordered a coffin to be built too. Instead he goes down stairs to dry land.
Well, the water above, eventually drained down below too. So what does he do? Nips back upstairs while it's all draining on top of him, but I guess as it drains it doesn't count as actually being there or something. By the time he got back up top, the top was down to 3/7 and he sauntered out of the room as if nothing had happened.
And the elves survived too! Though I do have a rather large pool of water outside.