A poor choice of plant

Each morning I go down to the ponds a couple of times to look for newly emerging dragonflies and damselflies (big advantage of working at home). Until now I'd found lots of exuviae and lots of recently emerged individuals, but had never caught one in the act of emerging. I was quite surprised (and pleased) to catch this broad-bodied chaser larva climbing up a stalk of mint.





Unfortunately the mint proved difficult to climb, the larva fall back in the water and was unable to climb out again before the dragonfly emerged, on its side. At this point I think that the wings were damaged and although she did manage to climb a little she died a few hours later.