Hello Monks, this may be a DQ (dumb question), but how do I capture a failure to connect to the SMTP server when using Email::Sender?

I've tried to capture the results in a variable:

$RES =  sendmail($email, { transport => $transport });

When it connects to $transport everything works fine, but occasionally it doesn't connect, and I see "unable to connect to SMTP server" and a bunch of trace messages. Those messages don't get put into $RES so the script can't tell if it's failed, and I can't code some appropriate behavior.

=============================
unable to establish SMTP connection

Trace begun at C:\strawberry\perl\site\lib\Email\Sender\Transport\SMTP
+.pm line
6
Email::Sender::Transport::SMTP::_throw('Email::Sender::Transport::SMTP
+=HASH(0x3
fcb9c)', 'unable to establish SMTP connection') called at C:\strawberr
+y\perl\si
e\lib\Email\Sender\Transport\SMTP.pm line 63
etc....
==========================
[download]

In fact it seems that the script crashes when this happens and doesn't continue.

I've done some homework on how to catch errors but must be missing something here.

thanks!