animating non-avatars

I am interested in building a model of a statue in such a way that I can use an animator tool on it to have it animate (walk, swing a weapon, etc.) Is this doable in SL or are animations limited to avatars only? If animations are out of the question, would anyone have any suggestions on how to animate models that are not avatars? I looked at the pupeteer stuff and that seems a bit cumbersome for animation of a humanoid form.

Prims can't be animated with character animations, but they can be moved via scripting. There are figures (a dancing skeleton comes to mind ) done this way and I believe tools to help do it for non-scripters...

Here are two I found on SLX:

Needed to throw in a shameless plug for my animation tool Puppeteer
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=163930

Let me plug my own product then too, which allows for hierarchical movements we are used when animating avatars:

http://www.slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=452936