First, it would be really handy if you'd point out line 17. ;-)

Unless I miscounted something, line 17 is the line that says:

my $id = $cookies{'ID'}->value();
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To me, that means that the 'ID' key doesn't exist in the %cookies hash. Try dumping the hash as a debug step to see what cookies CGI::Cookie::fetch thinks are there. I would bet that 'ID' isn't one of them. Especially if you're testing this on the commandline (although it's perfectly feasible that it doesn't exist when it's out in production, say if a user has cookies disabled).