Pitting:
My cage traps (intended for goblins) are picking up all manner of animals such as badger men, moose men, panda men, and regular animals as well.
Since there is no easy way (hello! They are in a cage, yet if you assign military to kill them they just stand there looking lost - stick your dang spear between the bars idiot!) to kill them I set up a pit like the "mass pit" set up on the wiki. I got down 9 z's before I hit cavern ceiling. I pitted one badger man as a test and while it got pretty beat up it survived.
I reeeaaaallly don't want to terraform the cavern and risk my miners attracting all sorts of unpleasantness by channeling the pit lower (it's one of this high caverns where the floor is like 10 z levels below with huge columns going all the way up, so not ideal for terraforming). With some exemplary feats of engineering and some luck I *could* do it, but it's last resort.
However, I didn't take out all the rocks at the bottom of the pit (hundreds of them due to the channeling. I heard if something falls on something else (it was in reference to dwarfs or other enemies) then they act as if the fall didn't even happen. Could my loose stone be "cushioning" the fall of the creatures I'm pitting?
I really need the cages before the first main siege inevitably comes (I'm in early fall of 3rd year, so it's coming...) as I have no military save one leather armored axedwarf (I was waiting to get magma before forging in earnest) and for the same reason no metal weapon traps. So, aside from helping me with my pit, any other *easy* ways of disposing of this vermin would be appreciated. Building the cages, connecting them to levers, and then releasing them is not my definition of easy.
Thanks!