making the right choice?

Question
My boys are 11 and 7--they have their hearts set on getting a ferret from our local pet store.  They have been reading about it and looking up info.  I am ok with everything EXCEPT that I am reading that they smell.  I am very picky about my house and cleanliness so I am just concerned about the smell.   Is is really that bad?

Answer
Ferrets do have a ferret smell just like other animals smell like themselves. But if the cage is kept clean and especially the litter boxes most people don't notice the smell unless the ferret is directly in their face. Another thing that helps is not bathing the ferrets a lot. Some people make the mistake of bathing their ferrets too often which causes them to smell absolutely horrible due to them having to produce more oil on their skin to prevent it from drying out.

I always bath a new ferret to get the pet store or house smell off of them but other than that my ferrets are only bathed if they get into something.

Almost everyone new that comes into my house has no idea that I have ferrets until they see the giant cage in the living room. I clean litter boxes once in the morning and once in the evening and do a general wipe down of the shelves and once a week I do a complete clean of washing litter boxes, hammocks, cloth toys, shelves, cage bars, etc. and this helps a ton to keep my house from smelling like ferrets.

Another huge thing on smell is the type of food you feed the lower the quality the more they smell because of the ingredients low quality foods use.

Here is a food chart that lists great and horrible foods (rated highest to lowest) http://www.mdferretpaws.org/care/food_treats.html

here are a few sites with excellent info including illnesses and things like that
http://www.hugawoozel.com/ferretcare.html
http://www.ferretcare.org/
http://www.mdferretpaws.org/care/index.html
http://www.ferret-universe.com/
http://www.forum.ferret.com/ (this is a great forum people there are very friendly and are more than eager to help any way possible.)