It needed a little cleaning up but it does work. ;-)

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use Net::Ping;

my $host = "127.0.0.1";
my $ping = Net::Ping->new("udp");
if ($ping->ping($host,1)){
    print "$host is alive\n"}
else{ print "$host is unreachable\n" };
[download]