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Tourists won’t be the only thing hogging the Big Apple sidewalks this summer.

When people think of New York City rats, they usually picture woodchuck-size vermin darting through alleyways, or bursting through basement ceilings a la “Ratatouille.”

They’re not wrong.

During a recent ride-along with veteran exterminator Favio Ulloa, The Post didn’t spot a single rodent —we must’ve gotten lucky.

But our lack of sightings wasn’t evidence that they weren’t there.

What was discovered was the almost imperceptible cracks in the wall they exploit, the poison used to dispatch them and the constant snake-and-mongoose battle between Gothamites and the city’s most resilient varmint — all telltale signs that we were in the presence of the city’s furry arch-nemesis

“They have to [block the holes] with mesh,” said Ulloa, owner of Prestige Pest Services, as he points to gaps in the plumbing at an infested Bronx laundromat. “If you close an opening with just sheet rock, the rats eat through it. They eat through sheet rock like paper.”

By shadowing Ulloa, who has spent 25 years waging the war on rats, on a hot summer day, The Post was able to glean a behind-the-scenes look at why these beasts thrive in NYC, how to know if a rat problem is in one’s vicinity and what New Yorkers can do to keep our unofficial mascot at bay.

According to experts, summer is when these fun-size squatters become especially active.

“At the beginning of the season, we do see a hurricane season for rats,” Gil Bloom, the president of NYC extermination company Standard Pest Management, told The Post. “So you’re always going to see an increase in rodents and rodent activity as we head into summer.”

The reasons are straightforward.

They breed more in warmer, but not scorching, weather, food is plentiful, and humans spend more time outdoors and are more likely to notice them, causing 311 complaints to climb. However, Bloom quipped that many supposed infestations could simply be the same animal running back and forth.

The reasons are straightforward.

Whether New Yorkers are facing more rat-ivity than years past depends on who you ask.

Through June 28, the city’s 311 hotline had received 7,960 reports of rat sightings, down from 10,492 for the same period last year — an over 24 percent decline.

Meanwhile, Bloom agrees that the city is less ratty than the post-pandemic rat boom, when outdoor dining areas and “makeshift food service areas” created a Valhalla for varmints.

“We’re better in 2026 than we were in 2023, but not as good as we were in 2017, 2019,” said Bloom.

The problem also varies by borough.

From 2023 to 2024, ratcalls fell in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Staten Island but soared in Queens and the Bronx, with Jamaica Hills experiencing a 119 percent spike.

The battle remains extraordinarily challenging as these cheese-eaters are supremely adaptable. Ulloa recalled one Brooklyn job where rats swam up through a building’s sewer lines and chewed their way up through several floors.