An excellent piece of detective work :-)

So just grabbing the key alone and pulling the value manually will work.

knoppix@Microknoppix:~$ perl -Mstrict -wE '
my %hash = (
   one => q{ein},
   two => q{zwei},
   six => q{sechs},
   );
say qq{@{ [ %hash ] }};
for ( 1 .. 9 )
{             
    my $k = each %hash || each %hash;
    say qq{$_: $k => $hash{ $k }};
}'
six sechs one ein two zwei
1: six => sechs
2: one => ein
3: two => zwei
4: six => sechs
5: one => ein
6: two => zwei
7: six => sechs
8: one => ein
9: two => zwei
knoppix@Microknoppix:~$
[download]

Thanks for clearing up the mystery.

Update: Apologies to duelafn, I didn't see his post before making this essentially identical reply.

Perfect - in a way this works even better for me since I don't really need the value - just the key anyway.
And yes thanks to all for the incredible follow through and detective work.