What's that bug? continued

After identifying the lobate lac scale, I thought I would try to identify another of the unusual looking bugs in the "Hemiptera" folder.  The larva pictured below seemed like it ought to be easy to identify due to its distinctive appearance, including branched spikes and secreted covering.

A strange, spiky larva on a leaf.

However, the closer that I looked at the picture, the more I began to doubt that it really was a hemipteran.  But if it wasn't a bug, what was it?  Browsing through the various orders of insects, I stumbled across a picture that looked both strange and familiar -- a match for one of the insects in my "Unknown" folder.

An adult male narrow bark louse (Graphopsocus cruciatus) on a rose hip.

The tiny mystery insect was a narrow bark louse, a distant relative of parasitic lice with a much more agreeable diet of plants, lichens, and fungi.  Returning from this lucky digression to the problem of the spiky larva, I eventually came across a surprising answer.

A tortoise beetle larva with its "fecal shield".

The larva was an immature tortoise beetle and possibly a golden tortoise beetle (Cassida sexpunctata), which is considerably more attractive as an adult.