This error cannot be caught by your Perl interpreter because it is a (programming) error in the XS part of Event.pm. If you have the proper C compiler for your version of Perl available, you can try to upgrade to the latest version of Event (1.06 at this time), which seems to pass its tests under Solaris. Of course, your problem might not be covered by the test suite, so that is no indication that upgrading will work.