Ah, I asked because I've seen certain operating systems make a mistake and blitz things Perl needs. OS X did this a while ago. Try installing the perl-devel package for your OS, since most modules you try to install will look require this.

Update: a google search of the interwebs for the error message you have shows several results, the first looks promising

Hey, this does look very promising. I'm pretty sure this is what will fix it.

I'll give it a shot.

Thanks to everyone for the support!