In addition, if that path to perl is correct above, would anyone have any idea why perl scripts would be rendering as text rather than being interpreted by the perl interpreter?

This is from Bravenet's Hosting FAQ:

12.Does Bravenet Website Hosting support server-side scripts such as CGI, Perl, PHP, ASP, Cold Fusion, etc?

We do not support CGI, Perl, ASP, or any other server-side scripts except PHP at this time.

We also support client-side scripting languages, such as Javascript, Java, CSS, HTML, etc.

We do not provide support for how to install scripts written in the PHP language.