I figured it out, and it’s kinda boneheaded, but an easy mistake. I originally had the site running under a development domain (domain.info), then went live under a different domain (domain.com). I had FTP access to both domains, and it seemed while logging in using the “.info” domain was having an effect if I tried to purposely “break” the site (just to see if I was really using the right htaccess), I had to log in using the “.com” domain to get to the right one. I don’t recall if these two sites are now living on separate hosting, but if that was true then I shouldn’t be able to break the site by altering the “wrong” htaccess, right??
Anyhow, the basic redirect rule works just fine now.
Redirect 301 /carpetcare/default.aspx /carpet-care/
I spent WAY too long on this issue. …arrgh!