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Eat, Play, Live

Remember in the Lord of the Rings when the armies of darkness descended on the white city and systematically began destroying it?

Catapults were a main part of their arsenal. The kind of catapult they used is known as a trebuchet (treybooshay), a more powerful, more accurate version of the standard stone hurler.

Now think about those Christmas presents you received this year that you neither asked for nor want, what to do with them?

Well, the folks at the Science Museum have the answer – you bring it and they'll fling it.

Two VMI professors built a trebuchet back in the late 1990s for so-called educational purposes, but who believes that. They'll be hauling their fearful contraption to Richmond this weekend for a demonstration.

One witness to a similar demonstration described it as sounding "like a screaming elephant."

Who doesn't want to hear that?

  It happens from noon to 4 p.m. on Saturday at the Science Museum. For details and specifics on what kinds of things can be flung, go to www.smv.org/nowshowing/events/ .