CHERRYVILLE, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) – “Once upon a time, there was a girl who really loved giraffes,” a series of bedroom signs read at a Cherryville home.

Look around and you quickly realize that the tall mammals are Debbie Zurbriggen’s spirit animals.

“I fell in love with that animal,” she says of the fascination that goes back to middle school.

No matter what the occasion, daughter Beth Parra knows just what to buy for her mother.

“Giraffes have always been her thing,” Parra told Queen City News.

There are stuffed animals, blankets, slippers, even a giraffe on her case of her iPhone, which went off from time to time while we were there.

“You got boys texting you or something?” this reporter quipped.

She’d already made us comfortable enough to say such things.

“That don’t even de

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