NEW YORK: The first time John Johnson's artificial hip squeaked, he was bending down to pick up a pine cone in his yard in Thomasville, Georgia. Johnson looked up, expecting to find an animal nearby. Susan O'Toole, a nutritionist at Montefiore Medical Center in New York, who first squeaked going upstairs after getting home from her hip-replacement surgery in 2005, said she thought the banister she was gripping needed repair.