A lot of people are having problems resolving using the loopback address (127.0.0.1), try using an IP address that is bound to one of your NIC's.
That's odd.. I myself have never done it any other way.. of course, I always make sure that 127.0.0.1 has allow rights for both query and recursion...
That said, such a bug should also affect dig.
Keneth, can you double-check your resolv.conf. Is 127.0.0.1 the only listed nameserver? In the past I've seen issues where Net::DNS only used the first nameserver from resolv.conf, and would fail all DNS queries if that host wasn't live. Dig is more aggressive, and will by default try various servers from resolv.conf until it finds one that works...
