Hmmm, well now I'm rather perplexed. I have 4 perl binaries on my system:

/usr/bin/perl,
/usr/bin/perl5.6.0,
/usr/local/bin/perl,
and /usr/local/bin/perl5.6.1

Now the perl files are the same size in each respective directory (I made sure, using 'diff'). I then removed /usr/bin/perl (since I still had the perl5.6.0 binary as a backup) and replaced it with a link to /usr/local/bin/perl. I verify that it was functioning properly by running 'perl -v' and it now tells me that it is version 5.6.1 AND when I do a 'perl -V' I get the new paths.

heres where I'm going crazy:

I now go to startup my apache with '/etc/init.d/httpd start' and it gives me the same error message as I was getting in my original post. Even though /usr/bin/perl is a link to /usr/local/bin/perl, Apache is looking for the 5.6.0 perl paths. Does apache get its path information from a different place? please help.

(BTW thank you so much for your help so far)
Brian