President Bush and a tale of man's best friend

Call of the wild
It is unusual, but not unheard of, for a U.S. representative to accept gifts of living creatures.

In Mongolia last fall, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld received a horse as a symbol of friendship between the two countries. He left it behind in the care of a herdsman. Bush joked during his own visit there in November that he was on an important mission.

"Secretary Rumsfeld asked me to check on his horse," the president said.

During a 1962 tour of India and Pakistan, first lady Jacqueline Kennedy's gifts included a baby elephant, a pair of tiger cubs and a thoroughbred bay gelding named Sardar.

She sent the horse home by military transport, which brought complaints from a Republican congressman who said he could not catch a military flight from Pakistan to Greece as a result. The other animals eventually made it to U.S. zoos.

Generous gift-givers
In all, Bush accepted more than 100 gifts worth nearly $75,000 from the leaders of some 50 countries last year, including a Lalique crystal paperweight, a Hermes blanket and a Desert Ranger motorcycle. They ranged in value from the thousands of dollars to a few bucks.

"He can't use them personally. So that's too bad," Laura Bush seemed to lament when reporters asked about gifts as Japan's Junichiro Koizumi visited in June. The former prime minister gave her husband a bicycle and a blowup of a Japanese postage stamp featuring Babe Ruth.

Last year, Afghan President Hamid Karzai gave a beige rug with a diamond pattern and Saudi Arabia's crown prince gave a vermeil horse statue on a malachite base with a gold, mother of pearl and malachite octagonal clock. Each was worth $8,000.

Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a $5, 8-by-11-inch photo of Bush's father, former President George H.W. Bush, and family on the rocks in Kennebunkport, Maine.

Putin also gave other photos, and a $250 silver horse shoe.