This is a bug in Perl relating to pseudohashes, and is fixed in 5.9.0-to-be. There, it gives the more edifying message "Not a HASH reference at ..."

perl -pe '"I lo*`+$^X$\"$]!$/"=~m%(.*)%s;$_=$1;y^`+*^e v^#$&V"+@( NO CARRIER'