A canine soap opera

It's quite late in the night now.Guess its around 2:30 in the morning. Ever since I started working in second shift, my sleep pattern has been greatly affected. I hate tossing and turning in bed and waiting to fall asleep. Until I feel my eyes burning for want of sleep and I am in danger of dropping my laptop/mobile to the ground in utter exhaustion, I seldom lie down in bed even if it is way past midnight.

So here I am: a self proclaimed insomniac trying to download songs from the net, and being serenaded by a canine soap opera right outside my window.
I guess they are the only creatures other than myself, awake and moving about in this corner of the world right now. Listening to them bark, howl,whine and yell, I'm trying to picturise the many I have seen roaming about on the roads outside my hostel and am wondering which ones are there outside my window right now.

There's this small black pup, who during day time is often seen loitering around the butcher's, hoping to feed on left over meat. Then there's the white and beige spotted guy with an attitude of a school headmaster, and a tail which sticks out in the opposite direction like a path finder ; the unruly gang of white, black and spotted youths who are always getting into fights on the road and making life a little more scary for all the pedestrians ,with all the teeth baring ,deep throated growls and kungfu moves in the dust; the couple of Laila's in the pack, of whom all these road-romeo's are mad about..

The howling of dogs at night used to make me very scared, thinking of all those spooky stories about dogs howling on seeing ghosts n all ...Even though their orchestra makes the nights more dreary and scary, nowadays I have started looking forward to these performances. It gives me a companionship in the otherwise lonely night.

Sometimes it is a solitary bark now and then. Some days all of a sudden couple of them decide to assemble within 20 m radius of my window, and start a series of high/low pitched howls. The off key soap opera usually continues for some time, with the pitch rising and falling...canine soprano's joining and dropping out of the chorus in a perfectly asynchronised way, and finally trails off in a series of low pitched whines..
Some days I hear a lone dog barking all by itself for quite sometime.. like having a conversation to itself.( and reminds me of those project meetings we have back in office..which is often a monologue by Mr. M ..shhh !!!! you know who).

I often wonder what triggers them off during the night. Is it the ghosts or is it Jack the ripper..or just a rat ...or is it just their nocturnal instincts surfacing after midnight.Whatever the reason might be, the ruckus they create is enough to keep the devil himself away from this place(and hopefully keep the dead in their graves).