small red bug inside gob of spit, friend or foe?

I have some strawberry plants that are blooming nicely. When inspecting them before watering today, I noticed a whole bunch of "spit" all over the bases of the plants. Upon prodding with a cutip, out crawled a small red bug.

Do I need to worry about this? and if so, how do I get rid of them. If pictures are needed, let me know and I'll see what I can do.

 

Might be some kind of spittle bug.

 

I looked up spittle bug on google and none of the pictures match the little guy that I found. It's about the size of a pencil lead. The body is bright red and the head is a brownish colour. The bug is slow and didn't try to get away from me at all, it just crawled sluggishly around the cutip head.