change the hlstats.pl script that it will not output anything.
eg. add a --quiet option to suppress any output.
this should make it to be run as a background process much easier.
then redirect all the output (if enabled) to a log file.
if run in quiet mode only a exit signal will be returned.
this way we can create a "monitor" script with
http://search.cpan.org/~bzajac/Proc-Background/lib/Proc/Background.pm
and monitor the hlstats.pl script