Police have removed what appeared to be a fake bomb that was found Thursday morning in the mailbox of a Whitefield home.

A resident of South Hunts Meadow Road called police at 7:42 a.m. Thursday to report that a suspicious object — a bottle that contained a clear liquid and was attached to a watch — had been left in a mailbox, Lt. Michael Murphy, of the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office, said in a news release Thursday afternoon.

A part of South Hunts Meadows Road was closed for an hour and a half as a Maine State Police bomb squad and an investigator from the state fire marshal’s office worked at the scene, police said.

They removed the bottle, which turned out to be a fake device, and sent it to the Maine State Police Crime Lab in Augusta for further analysis, Murphy said. The sheriff’s office and the fire marshal’s office are continuing to investigate the incident.

Police reminded the public to call 911 whenever a suspicious package or device is discovered, to move a safe distance away from the object and not to touch, move or examine it.

“A safe distance can be summed up by a quote from a fire marshal’s investigator,” Murphy said. “‘If you can see the device, the device can see you.'”