Digging around on the mysql boards I found out others have this problem as well. All, like me, are running active perl on windows boxes and using the mysqlPP driver. I switched to the mysql driver and presto - works like a champ.
The mysqlPP driver is part of the default active perl PPM set. The mysql PPM has to be downloaded from University of Winnipeg.
Thanks for the assistance and hope this helps someone digging around for the answer!