Identify this bug

Factual Questions
1

I saw a very pretty bug today and can’t seem to figure out what it is. The animal in question is about an inch or a little more long, with six legs and wings. It has a white, furry body (looks almost like a caterpillar’s), with six black dots on its head – very symmetrical: three running down the right side and three on the left. It has retractable antennae or horns at the front of its head which it seems to put up when it’s crawling around exploring and down when it’s resting or alarmed.

Its wings are small (more like a cicada’s or a leaf-hopper’s than like a moth’s), translucent and speckled with black dots. He seemed pretty happy to crawl around on the sidewalk, and didn’t try to fly at all, even when I prodded him gently with the stem of a clover flower, although he did flutter his wings once or twice. Mostly, though, he kept them folded back tightly over his body.

Sorry I couldn’t get a picture of him, but if any of you have likely guesses and can point me at pictures on the web, I’ll know him when I see him.

Thanks!

2

Where are you located? What is the shape of the insect’s body?

3

i’m kind of wondering if it might not be a moth just emerged from a cocoon whose wings have not yet expanded fully. Otherwise it doesn’t ring a bell.

4

I was in Rockville, outside of D.C. My first thought was very young moth, actually, but the wing shape really didn’t compare to any of the moth pictures I was looking at on the web.

It was kind of shaped like the two moths drawnhere. But its head wasn’t nearly so distinct from its body as they are in those drawings, and its wings didn’t come all the way down to cover its hind end, which was kind of pointy. And its antennae or horns or whatever seemed to come out right over its proboscis at the very front of its head, rather than being so far back like on those drawings.

Sorry to be so vague. I was just really captivated by its markings and thought they might ring a bell for somebody here.

5

That link just shows a sketch of a roach.

Aside from a young, just-emerged moth it could be one that has lost some of the scales off its wings so they look translucent.

Here’s a couple possibilities

http://cedarcreek.umn.edu/insects/albumframes/027frame.html

Some of these are white-bodied:

6

Sorry about the roach – I must have screwed up the link somehow. Anyway, of the pictures you linked to this looks closest to my guy. But it’s really hard to tell, because his wings were definitely much more speckly, and I don’t see any spots on the head of the critter in the picture.

Anyway, that may be as close as I can get – thanks a lot for your help!