Or, since you're just taking the chr value of each of those numbers, just use map:

my @whirley = map chr, qw/32 176 177 178 219 178 177 176/;
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Then you don't have to bother with split and all that.

Also, the whirley function could use some work (particularly since it gives a warning):

sub whirley {
    $WHIRLEY_COUNT = 0 if ++$WHIRLEY_COUNT == @whirley;
    return $whirley[$WHIRLEY_COUNT];
}
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The most important change here is the return line. You were taking an array slice:

    return "@whirley[$WHIRLEY_COUNT]";
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which isn't what you want to do; you just want a single element (and you don't need the quotes):

    return $whirley[$WHIRLEY_COUNT];
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