it was most definitly alive when I caught it in Dec. The weather was a bit weird that time - +8" of snow followed by a big warm-up / rain / melt, resulting in a large puddle with lots of flotsum, from which this beetle was collected alive. Don't know if it could have just hatched during the thaw, but I'd rather suspect it was already "wintering" / hunkered down somewhere, prior to the snowstorm, and then got thawed-out and subsequently went rafting to stay above water. see here