My latest fortress is cut primarily into a glacier in order to bypass a nearby aquifer, and seeing as I had practically no stone to begin with, I used the ice that lay strewn around the place for a few basic walls before I started to dig into the limestone.
I am telling you this in case this is related to the problem IE pathfinding problems etc.
Anyhow, let's get to the problem itself. I was recently swarmed by macaques, evil little blighters, and I decided to draft two miners and a peasant to go and kill them, and the mission was a great success. Corpses litter the ground. There were no survivors.
Upon deciding not to let the corpses go to waste, I tried to butcher the corpses for their wonderous fat to start work on my grand soaping industry. (Who knows, I could build fortresses out of the stuff.)
However, instead of simply butchering them, I was met by the most annoying message "Onul Eseshrovod Ranger cancels Butcher an Animal: Needs butcherable unrotten nearby item".
For some reason, my dwarves aren't bringing the corpses back to the refuse pile, nor are they bringing back the wood that they have chopped down to my wood stockpile. The only stockpile that has been filled so far is the food stockpile, containing barrels from my wagon and various plump helmet barrels.
Interestingly, upon attempting to create a second wall to create some sort of airlock entrance to the stockpiles out of ice, I was met with a message explaining that there were items blocking the way and the dwarves had suspended construction of the wall.
Notably, there are two blocks of ice sitting directly where I wished to place the wall.
Another piece of information is that my ranger slew various groundhogs with his crossbow before attacking the very same yeti that I wished to capture and caused me to have to open my task manager and close down dwarf fortress.
Upon trying to butcher these groundhogs, I had the very same problem with the same message.
Can anyone help me? I'm aware another gentleman had a similar problem with butchering harpies, which I know are humanoid, but it gives me the same message.