What do the spaceships and alligators have in common?

The dream was set farther into the future than I expect humanity to survive, and yet Jamie was a child of grade school age.

 

We were lost, trying to find our way to something similar to today’s Disney world, when I noticed an American Airlines “jet” take a hard turn toward the airport.  (Funny that I was lost, but knew which direction to the airport) At first it was trailing smoke and looked like a balloon version of a jet.  It has all of the right features, but was just pillowy in shape, and many times larger than today’s ships.  In the dream I recognized it as a high volume transport of that time, in both this and its later form.

 

It morphed into a much more ark shaped transport as it spun and wobbled slowly.  At first we were just stunned, watching it go down, and then fearing the crash might throw debris as far as where we stood, I grabbed Jamie up and began trying to cross the road to an open field on the other side.  There was some drama with cars nearly hitting us, because everyone’s eyes were on the dirigible looking, steel space craft that clearly was going to crash.

 

As we got to the field and were running; running like I’ve never run in a dream; running until my lungs were burning, I didn’t want to break momentum by looking back, until I heard my brother say that our dad was not able to run.  Dad has been barely able to walk since 2011 when he had his triple bypass heart surgery.  They had used veins from his legs in the procedure and he’s been slowed to a shuffle since then.

 

Now I didn’t know what to do.  The dirigible had used whatever magnetic power that sustained them, as the jets were now gone and it seemed to just hover without any visible propulsion, to direct the ship to the vacant field.  Presumably the pilot was doing everything possible to preserve as much life as they could, and we were just four people in a field compared to the busy shopping area on the other side of the highway.

 

It was in the moment of not knowing if I should continue to carry Jamie to safety, or if I could trust her little legs and will to live enough, that I could put her down and go back for my father; that I woke up.

 

You would think that waking from such a dream would immediately bring to my conscious mind the question of the meaning between saving my daughter or saving my father, but instead I was first struck by the notion of the flying ark, and how it worked.  Later, I thought about the obvious.  So, I did what everyone does these days, and googled it.

 

“To see a spaceship in your dream symbolizes your creative mind. It denotes a spiritual journey into the unknown and signals self-development and self-awareness. Alternatively, the dream suggests that you need to take on a different perspective, no matter how bizarre or unusual it may be.

 

Dreaming that spaceships are falling out of the sky and crashing into earth implies that your ideas may be too outlandish and far-fetched. Perhaps you have set unrealistic goals for yourself and you are just setting yourself up for failure.”

 

Finding that to be particularly true of the goals I set, i.e. a world where all wild cats live free, I queried the same website, dreammoods.com about the other recurring element in my dreams; being surrounded by alligators.

 

“To see an alligator in your dream symbolizes treachery, deceit, and hidden instincts. It may be a signal for you to take on a new perspective on a situation. It may also represent your ability to move between the physical, material world of waking life and the emotional, repressed world of the subconscious. Alternatively, the alligator represents healing powers and qualities. An alligator also suggests that you are thick-skinned or insensitive.”

 

As to being nearly hit by cars dreammoods states; To dream that you are almost hit or were ran over by a car suggests that your lifestyle, beliefs or goals may be in conflict with another's.  (No Kidding!) As for