1. She can quote Plato.
Alaska’s former governor may have been dissed by intellectuals in the August issue of Vanity Fair, but in the same month, she told runnersworld.com: “As Plato said, “You learn more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.”

2. Her wedding ring cost $35.
Sarah’s very fond of the ring, although she’s been seen without it—only because it hurts when she shakes a lot of hands. So she puts it in husband Todd’s pocket.



3. Sarah’s mom and dad, Chuck and Sally Heath, are “nuisance control specialists.”
That means trappers. After 9/11, Chuck and Sally trapped rats at the Fresh Kills Landfill in New York, where debris from the World Trade Center had been shipped. The couple have also worked at the Anchorage Airport, shooing birds off the runways so they won’t fly into airplane engines.

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4. She hates moose eyeballs.
At age 14, Sarah helped her dad butcher (field-dress) a moose he had caught for the family. But when he asked her to hold the animal’s eyeballs, she refused. Her father, a science teacher, needed the items for his biology class. (The family also enjoyed bear and sheep stews.)



5. Her first nickname was “Sarah Barracuda.”
In high school, Sarah was a tough point guard on the basketball team, so good that the kids called her “Sarah Barracuda or ‘The Pusher.” During the presidential campaign, some unfriendly publications implied the nickname was pejorative, a sign of her inclination to go for the jugular. One publication even said that people around Palin had labeled her a “narcissistic personality.” This was probably unfair. However, when her last child, Trig, was born, Sarah did send an e-mail announcement signed: “Trig’s Creator, Your Heavenly Father.”