I have heard much of the legendary catsplosion, and I've taken steps to prevent it in my own fort. However, I think I've run into an entirely different problem that I'm having a bit more trouble dealing with.
My current fort is a running experiment, I'm trying to see how big of a population I can get from births only, no immigration. It's running slow, but it's been a surprisingly successful fort so far, and the population is gradually starting to climb as more and more of the original 7 dwarves marry each other.
Early on, however, a pair of wild camels fell into one of the dried out murky ponds surrounding the walls of the fort. I thought nothing much of it at first, but then I found out that this was a *breeding* pair of camels. They seem to be much inclined to repeat my own experiment, on a much faster scale. The pond is now completely full of red-and-brown 'C' s, and despite them not having much space to move around in, they seem to be slowing down my frame rate. It's not gotten unbearable yet, but their population seems to be increasing exponentially, despite (perhaps BECAUSE of) the cramped quarters.
I can't send hunters out to take care of this, since the fort is immensely rich, and surrounded by goblin ambushes despite the low population (right now 20 dwarfs, 12 of them children.) Just about any time the merchants stop by, they're immediately slaughtered.
I've tried tunneling *under* the murky pond, but the miners get scared away by the camels' threatening noises about 3 spaces away from the damn things. Not to mention, it would probably end up flooding the fort with an innumerable horde of one-humped, fornicating, homicidal camels.
The only solution I've come across so far is to build a 10-story-high pumping tower (needs to be that high to avoid their threat radius), with a bridge running out from the top directly over the camels' pit, and drown the beasts. However, this project is going to take time, especially with my frame rate gradually dropping. I've already had to use the reveal utility (since revealed forts seem to run faster on my system for some reason) and set the affinity of the fort to a single dedicated processor every time I start it up, and that's just making it *bearable*
Does anyone have a faster solution to the problem?